


it's in the stars

by boo98 (butter)



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Coffeeshop AU, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pining, Romcom as hell, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 00:25:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 22,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9853583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butter/pseuds/boo98
Summary: Seungkwan has two older sisters, which he likes to use as an excuse for being an absolutely awful romantic.





	1. part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the cheesiest thing ever but I can't help myself. It was originally going to be a oneshot but it ended up working out better split into two parts, so expect part 2 out in maybe a week but hopefully sooner. 
> 
> come say hi, follow me, request headcanons or ficlets at boo98.tumblr.com

It’s still winter but the bitter cold of January has given way to something freezing but less likely to bite at your nose. Seungkwan left his coat inside so he’s shivering, a little, and there’s just the lightest mist in the air that sends goosebumps prickling up his arms and dampens the very ends of his hair against the back of his neck.

Hyerin-noona had told him he’d just end up covered in chalk, which is precisely why he’s taking almost surgical care in writing their daily specials on the small blackboard sign they keep out on the sidewalk. He’s only in his second-best pair of black uniform slacks but he’s writing in bright pink chalk for Valentine’s day and as much as he’d be fine with it the manager probably wouldn’t want him covered in pink all day.

But it was the principle of the thing, Seungkwan figures to himself with pursed lips as he crouches on the stoop of the café and carefully writes the name of the raspberry latte they’re highlighting this week. This was the first time he worked the opening shift by himself, and while Hyerin normally took care of the chalkboard she had had to call in late that morning and told Seungkwan that he could do it this one time, maybe, and only if literally no one else was around.

“Like, if you see anyone walk by the store while you’re writing it, just ask them to do it instead. You’re going to make a mess of things,” she had admonished him over the phone when she called to tell him what was up. “I won’t take responsibility if sales drop just because they’re all scared of your handwriting.”

“Noona,” Seungkwan whined while he pushed through some early-morning salesmen traffic getting off the subway, “you have so little faith in me.”

“All I know is you’re going to end up tracking chalk everywhere, and I’ll have to sweep that up tonight. Don’t forget to turn the sign over to ‘Open’, also, and switch the music system on. Something relaxing, please.”

“Seriously, so little faith. Everything will be fine, I’ll see you later.”

And so, because Seungkwan had plenty of experience getting nagged at by older women, he was determined to get this right and remain (mostly) chalk-free. Which, he figured, was probably why he didn’t notice the guy leaning over his shoulder until he spoke.

“Are you guys open?”

Seungkwan startles hard enough to almost fall backwards onto his ass but just barely shoots a hand out to catch himself against the pavement. It was still grey and overcast out that morning, so there’s no sun to blind him as he peers up at the person.

This guy looks half-dead, honestly. He’s wearing a ratty baseball hat pulled low over eyes that have deep purple, bruised-looking bags under them, and a white face mask covering the rest. He’s tucked himself in a thick winter coat and (Seungkwan notices after he gives him a quick once-over) scuffed-up sneakers.

“Uh, sorry, what?” Seungkwan shakes his head quickly, brain finally catching up. “Wait, never mind, um – no, not technically, but I’m gonna be opening up in like ten minutes. You can just come in now, if you want, but it’ll take me a few minutes to get the machines switched on.”

“Oh.” The guy scrapes a shoe against the sidewalk half-heartedly. “I don’t want to intrude. It’s just,” he casts a weary look up the street, “No one else opens until 7:30 and I kind of really need caffeine.”

Seungkwan heaves himself up off the sidewalk and only barely remembers to not wipe his hands on the thighs of his pants. “No, it’s no problem, as long as you don’t mind waiting a bit.” He checks his watch and yeah, it’s still 6:50. “Geez, you’re up early.”

The boy laughs and his voice catches huskily in a way that either means he’s sick or tired but definitely doesn’t mean it should make Seungkwan’s stomach swoop the way that it does. “I have class at 8 and I have to talk to my professor real quick first.” He stands behind Seungkwan while he flips the sign over to ‘Open’ and then holds the door so Seungkwan can go through first. “Normally it’s not an issue and I get coffee closer to school but I was up ‘till 3 last night finishing a paper and I think if I try to walk any farther I might just fall asleep on the side of the street.”

Seungkwan tuts. “You poor thing. Oh no, don’t worry, just sit wherever,” he adds when the guy stands awkwardly in the doorway while he heads behind the counter. “What do you want? Americano?”

“Iced Americano, if it’s not too crazy for this weather.” He takes off his baseball hat to ruffle through his hair, which is (dyed?) a medium-brown and cut short in the back but just long enough to flop over his forehead in the front. “Thanks so much, seriously.”

“And I’m serious too, it’s fine.” Seungkwan washes his hands quickly to get the chalk dust off and then sets to pulling out the pre-made espresso from the low mini-fridge. He bustles around, making the drink, and only sort of keeps an eye on the guy who’s now sitting at one of the low tables in the front with his legs stretched out. His backpack is at his feet and it looks near-bursting.

“What school do you go to?”

“SNU,” the guy says. “Grad school for international studies. Which is normally cool, but kind of crazy right now.”

Seungkwan hums as if he knows what international studies would even involve, like he didn’t spend barely two years in undergrad before leaving. “Sounds interesting?” He snaps the plastic lid onto the cup and, after a second, slides one of the cardboard slips on it too. It’s cold out, this guy’s hands will freeze if he tries to hold just the bare plastic cup. “Here’s your drink.”

“Oh my god, you’re an angel.” The boy shoots out of his seat and doesn’t seem to notice Seungkwan’s flustered blush because he’s too busy digging his wallet out of his back pocket. “Thank you so much, I’m serious, you’re the nicest, I’ll definitely tell all my friends to come here.”

“Oh god, that’s not necessary.” Seungkwan takes his money carefully, fingertips just barely brushing the side of the guy’s hand, and punches at the cash register a few times before scooping up the right change and sliding it across the counter towards him. “Although I won’t turn down free publicity.”

The guy laughs again, the same rusty one as before, and when he’s this close Seungkwan can see the way his eyes curve up in a smile. “My friends are all exhausted grad students. My best friend is in _med school_. You’ll be overrun.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be making this sound like a good thing?” Somewhere along the way Seungkwan started flirting, apparently, and really he can only blame the early hour and the pity that instinctually springs up at how tired this guy looks. “You should probably head out, if you’re trying to get to class by 8.”

The guy checks the clock that’s hanging on the wall before cursing under his breath (in English, at that, which just raises a whole new host of questions). “Yeah, um, you might be on to something there.” He pulls his mask down to take a bracing sip of the coffee before shooting a wide, barely sheepish grin at Seungkwan and oh _no_ , but he’s cute. “Thanks, again. You’re the best.”

It takes all Seungkwan has to just flap his hand at him while he rushes out of the café, and then it’s another few minutes of leaning against the counter before he finds the energy in him to actually set up the place for the real opening. It’s probably just a combination of the early hour and the fact that when he finally gets to turning the radio on it immediately starts blasting sugary-sweet drama soundtrack ballads, but his heart is running out of rhythm.

+++

An old SNSD album is playing over the speakers the second time the same guy sheepishly slinks into the café just after 7 in the morning, about four days later. Seungkwan doesn’t notice him at first because ‘Kissing You’ drowned out the bell above the door, and he currently has his head almost entirely in the mini fridge under the counter.

He just barely manages to not get a concussion when he hears a muffled, “Excuse me?” from the other side of the counter and he promptly bangs his head on the top of the fridge. Seungkwan scoots out, rubbing at the top of his head, and takes a second to haul himself off the floor.

“Shit, you ok?” The guy looks just as dead as before, and his hair is sticking up comically in the back. His eyes are wide and concerned, though, and it warms Seungkwan’s stomach a bit.

“Yeah, fine, you just startled me a bit,” he demurs, but the guy doesn’t look much more reassured. “Can I get you something?”

“Uh,” the guy looks a bit shell-shocked, like he wasn’t expecting the question, and casts his eyes up to look at the menu for a few pointless seconds before tilting his head puppy-like at Seungkwan. “Iced Americano?”

“You’re predictable, aren’t you?” Seungkwan laughs, though, and reaches to grab a plastic to-go cup. “Another late night?”

“Yeah,” the guy says and rubs at the back of his head where his hair is mussed up. “All-nighter, actually.”

Seungkwan whistles lowly. “Busy.”

“Tell me about it.” The guy bends nearly in half to rest his arms on the counter and bury his face in his elbows. “I never want to read anything ever again. Or translate shit into Korean, it’s killing me slowly I think.”

“Translate? What else do you speak?”

“English. So on one hand it’s cool because I can use a broader pool of research, but on the other hand I have to go back to Korean for these papers.” He shifts so that he can peek out above his arms and watch Seungkwan. “Did you go to school?”

Did he. “A little,” Seungkwan answers, clicking the plastic lid onto the cup and grabbing a straw. “It always seemed like a lot of work.” He grins widely at the guy as he hands him the coffee cup. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, god,” he takes a long sip with his elbows still propping him up on the counter. “I promise I’m going to pay for this, I just need to have like half of it before I can even think about the math involved in giving you the right amount of money.”

Seungkwan laughs (again, he’s doing that a lot for so early in the morning) and wipes his hands on one of the dishtowels by the sink. “No rush, it’s not exactly booming business yet.”

The guy looks around, as if for the first time remembering where he is. “Right. Are you always the only one here, or do other people actually work at this place too?”

“Oh, right.” Seungkwan shrugs. “It’s a small staff, me and the manager and one or two other baristas, depending on who’s available that week or whatever. Usually opening is slow for a bit so just one of us comes in for that.”

“Huh.” The guy sucks down more coffee, his cheeks hollowing out in a way that makes Seungkwan abruptly turn to the side to wipe down a perfectly clean section of the counter.

A moment of silence drifts over the two of them, the SNSD switching over to a bubbly Girl’s Day song as the guy seems to zone out and Seungkwan half-heartedly refills the sugar packets at the self-serve station. After a minute or so the guy seems to jerk out of whatever lull he had fallen into, and he straightens up from the counter.

“I should probably go,” he says, and he sounds strangely disappointed to be saying it. “I have class to get to. Thanks for the coffee, and everything.”

“Of course,” Seungkwan says, and steps back to the counter to punch his order in the register and show him the total. “Anytime, seriously. It’s kind of my job.”

“Ha, right.” He slides his money across the counter and steps back to stretch, spine popping and t-shirt running up the side of his stomach just slightly. “Have a good day, then. Hope you get tons of customers. I promise, I’m gonna give you the best free advertising ever back on campus, you’re gonna need to hire like ten more people.” He ignores the change that Seungkwan counts out quickly for him and waves instead, smile brightening as he spins out of the café like a whirlwind.

The song changes to slow, wishful Ailee and Seungkwan looks at the coins he had tried to push across the counter to the guy before scooping them up and dropping them to clink into the tip jar. His face feels hot, so he takes a second to lean against the cool metal of one of their iced tea containers.

+++

Seungkwan has two older sisters, which he likes to use as an excuse for being an absolutely awful romantic. He was only fourteen when his oldest sister showed him her soul marks – a cluster of small, dark birthmarks on her left wrist.

“He stopped me to ask where I got my purse,” she explained to him when they were washing dishes after dinner, “because he was going to get his mom one like it for her birthday. I didn’t even notice the marks until that night, but I had given him my number just in case he had any questions, so it was just a matter of waiting.” She had blushed, which was so weird and out of character for her that Seungkwan found himself turning red too, in response.

“Anyways,” she continued, passing him a bowl for him to dry, “it’s nothing definite yet. It’s just… I don’t know, a good sign, I guess.” She shoved him lightly in the shoulder. “Don’t worry, kid, your time’ll come. Maybe once you get off this island, the chances get so much higher on the mainland.”

Seungkwan quietly didn’t say anything in response to that – nothing about his worry that he’d never really escape Jeju, nothing about the seemingly-impossible expanse of people that there were in the world, and definitely nothing about the fact that even if he found his soulmate he wasn’t sure if his family would exactly approve. He was old enough that he’d started to absent-mindedly admire the ways that the older boys at his school sat, with the beginnings of curving muscles at their arms and confident tilts to their chins.

So he continued through life on the island, elbows and hands carefully tucked in, and then finally decided to move to Seoul for school. His mom hugged him tightly at the airport and didn’t say anything when he cried into her blouse, just sighed and wiped under his eyes when he finally pulled back.

“Take care of yourself,” she told him sternly, although her eyes were wet too. “Make sure you eat enough. I’m going to call to make sure, you know.”

Seungkwan had gulped back more tears and nodded, and then melted back into her for one more hug. In the end she hadn’t had to contact him at all, because he called her the second the plane landed, and then again when he reached his new apartment.

Seoul was big. Seungkwan knew that, obviously, and it wasn’t like he was a total country bumpkin or anything, but there was still a difference, some change in the air. He still kept his elbows tucked in but so did everybody else, especially in the summer when the brush of a bare arm was more of a threat. No one wanted to accidentally brush against their soulmate in rush hour traffic but then lose any chance of tracking them down again.

(Seoul was big. The same people that wore long-sleeve linen shirts in the summer also showed up to late-night events at bars with a tight cluster of friends, where they carefully but purposefully made the rounds and lightly touched everyone’s hand at least once.)

Soul marks were never definite. They weren’t always mutual, they didn’t always show up immediately, and they didn’t mean that the two people would never have any problems.

They also didn’t mean that a person had to be with their soulmate.

Seungkwan had never really asked his mom about it, but he was pretty sure her and his dad hadn’t been soulmates. And that wasn’t exactly taboo or anything, but it would always cause just the slightest change in expression if someone found out. The quirk of an eyebrow that asked “What’s wrong with you, then?”, and “So how long will this last?”.

Seungkwan didn’t like to think that he was that much of a purist about all that. His mom had loved his dad, he had always known that, and it was a little too old-fashioned to think that non-soul relationships were inherently subpar.

That didn’t stop him from religiously following even the cheesiest soulmate dramas, though, or occasionally daydreaming about his mark moment.

It was one of the most highly-illustrated points of life, the second that you developed a soul mark. It was a physical symbol that this person could be the one; keep an eye on them because they just might be perfect for you. Marks occupied a social space somewhere between a hickey and an engagement ring– they represented a certain degree of intimacy but also something to be proud of.

They could take multiple forms, anywhere from a cluster of freckles to a deep scar. There was plenty of research on what made them develop the way they did but no definite conclusions beyond the fact that it was the purposeful touch of one soulmate to another that gave the second their mark.

What _was_ sure was that Seungkwan wore large sweaters and jeans in the winter, wore t-shirts and shorts in the summer, wore gloves if it was snowing and scarves if it dipped below freezing. What was sure was that he kept careful tabs on the skid marks on his knees from his oldest sister shoving him when they were younger, and the mole on his elbow that had never changed. And if sometimes he was quick to check the tips of his fingers after they brushed accidentally against someone else’s on the bus then that no one’s problem but his.

+++

“Did you sweep last night when you closed?” Hyerin asks him over her shoulder from where she’s digging through the mini-fridge. “There are dead leaves all over the entrance.”

“They’re from today, noona,” Seungkwan whines. “I can’t stop nature.”

It’s just after 2 in the afternoon, putting them right in the lull after lunch that consists mostly of a few students and mothers out with their children. The specials have shifted from Valentine’s day to some matcha thing that no one ever orders, and either way Hyerin hasn’t let him write the sign for weeks now. Seungkwan’s leaning against the counter next to the cash register and poking at the tip jar, letting Hyerin tsk at him.

The bell above the door jingles as it swings open, and when Seungkwan glances up it takes him a solid ten seconds before he recognizes the guy from those weeks ago. He looks much less like a corpse right now, for one, with his hair actually in some semblance of style and real pants on. Two other guys are trailing behind him, and they exchange a look as they all approach the counter.

“Hey,” the guy from before says, grinning crookedly and shifting the strap of his backpack with one hand. “Told you I’d bring more paying customers.”

Seungkwan straightens up and quickly fixes his bangs, just in case they were even messed up at all. “Oh, um, hi. You look like you’ve gotten more sleep lately?” It comes out like a question, which really just makes him sound like a total dork, but the guy laughs.

“I guess so, about as much sleep as I could be getting.”

“No more all-nighters, though?”

“Not yet.” One of the guys behind him, a younger-looking kid with a bright snapback on, leans into his shoulder heavily and the first guy startles a bit. “Oh, uh, right.” He elbows the kid. “Sorry, this is Lee Chan, and,” he turns enough to tilt his chin at the other guy, “this is that med school friend of mine, Joshua.” Joshua nods at him, the corners of his lips curling up like a cat.

Seungkwan hums and smiles at them. “Nice to meet you, I’m Seungkwan. Did my Americano skills really impress him that much?”

Chan jostles the first guy out of the way enough to wag his eyebrows at Seungkwan. “The secret is that actually we’ll go anywhere that sells coffee under 5,000 won. Except maybe Joshua-hyung, he has more cultured tastes.”

The first guy elbows Chan again, harder this time, and Seungkwan thrills slightly to notice his ears turning red. “Don’t be rude, you brat. Their coffee’s good.” He turns back to Seungkwan, looking apologetic but amused. “No worries, I promise I won’t bring him again.”

Chan squawks behind him but is ignored, and Seungkwan only jumps a little when Hyerin’s voice suddenly pipes up from his right. “Seungkwannie, is there a reason you haven’t taken their order yet?” she asks him calmly, but one of her eyebrows twitches and it’s then that Seungkwan notices a short line has formed behind the three guys.

He looks back at Hyerin and gives her his sweetest smile. “Just talking to these wonderful customers, noona, I’ll get you their orders in a second!” She raises an eyebrow but huffs a sigh and ducks back over to the espresso machine, and he turns to grin wryly at them. “Sorry, how can I help you?”

They rattle off their orders – two iced Americanos and some latte thing for Joshua that Seungkwan figures Hyerin will know how to make – and as he’s punching their orders in the cash register something occurs to him.

“Uh,” he looks back up at the first guy. “Sorry, um. What name should I put for the order?”

There’s a pause, and then the blush from earlier comes back in full force. “Oh shit. Oh, um. I’m, uh, I’m Hansol.” Another beat of silence, and then both Chan and Joshua are cackling at him and Chan shoves him.

“Nice to meet you.” Seungkwan mentally pats himself on the back for not laughing too, and passes the order slip over to Hyerin.

Hansol chuckles, face still red, and rubs the back of his neck. “Uh, you too. Sorry, thanks for, um, taking our order.” He makes a jerky motion towards Seungkwan. “It’s just, uh, the name tag – I didn’t. Um. I’m Hansol, I mean.”

“Nice to meet you?” Seungkwan repeats, and it’s really just too precious how red Hansol’s ears are getting now.

Hansol nods, chin set and shoulders square. “Cool.” He grabs his change off the counter and spins, faking like he’s about to hit Chan in the shoulder before just slinging his arm around his neck and leading the other two over to a table by the window.

Seungkwan smiles just a little dopily as he walks away before he quickly takes the rest of the orders. No one gets the matcha thing.

Before long one of their other baristas arrives for her shift, bumping Hyerin to cash register and Seungkwan to the sinks to rinse out the blenders and plates from pastries. The radio is playing Busker Busker over the speakers, and he hums to himself a little bit as he scrubs at a bit of chocolate on ceramic.

“Hey!” Suddenly it’s Hansol, leaning over the counter behind Seungkwan, the last of his Americano clutched in one hand. “Sorry, I know you’re busy, I was just wondering when your shift ends?”

Seungkwan blinks, because this is all a little too drama-script perfect right now. He twists to look at the clock while holding his soapy hands away from him. “I don’t get off ‘til seven, but I haven’t taken my break yet.”

Hansol beams at him. “Cool! D’you, I mean, if you don’t have anything else to do, d’you want to hang out with us for a bit? For your break? Josh is working on a paper and it’s kind of killing the vibe, Channie and I are so bored.”

“Oh.” Seungkwan glances once at Hyerin, but she looks busy. “That would be cool, sure. Just give me a second to finish up here.” He flicks his bangs out of his face, or tries to at least; they’re getting kind of long and he can’t exactly use his hands right now.

“Yeah, totally, no problem.”

Seungkwan feels a keen sense of déjà vu as he watches Hansol walk away again. He scrubs the rest of the dishes – quickly but not so much that it seems desperate, and the fact that he’s analyzing this just goes to show how dumb he’s being – and dries his hands.

“Noona, I’m going on break,” he shoots over to Hyerin as he takes his apron off. She waves a hand at him and continues chatting with the other worker, and he takes that as enough permission.

The three of them are still sitting where they were earlier, books scattered on the table and volume loud as they argue about something. Hansol’s the first to notice Seungkwan hesitantly approaching them and he waves him over, tugging the last empty chair out form the table. “Hey, seriously, if you have better things to do for break it’s totally fine.”

“Well, I do normally have a hot date with the ahjumma at the deokbokki cart down the street, but I think she’ll understand,” he quips as he takes a seat, careful to not disturb the messily-arranged piles of loose paper. “You guys look busy.”

“It’s all Josh,” Hansol says, and Joshua looks up enough from typing at his laptop to roll his eyes. “He’s so studious.”

“I’m a student, it kind of comes with the territory,” Joshua says dryly, but takes a second to smile at Seungkwan. “But really, thanks for taking care of this kid before, he’s awful when he hasn’t had any sleep.”

“I’m not that bad,” Hansol whines, and then flinches when Chan reaches over to pinch his arm lightly.

“You’re a zombie, hyung, even I won’t deal with you like that,” he drawls.

“I didn’t think he was that bad,” Seungkwan hedges, earning himself a bright smile from Hansol in response. “Do you guys all go to SNU, then?”

“Just us,” Hansol says, and waves vaguely at himself and Joshua. “Chan went to undergrad there but he’s out now.”

“I teach at a dance studio,” Chan adds, and throws up a ‘V’ sign. “Support the starving artist life.”

“Oh, that sounds cool.” Chan doesn’t look like a dancer, really, more like any other awkward kid, but he’s buried under a shapeless sweatshirt and a pair of knock-off Adidas sneakers so anything’s possible.

“It’s something, that’s for sure. Definitely makes me feel better about my own skills sometimes.” Chan sniffs and pokes at Hansol. “You’re coming to the showcase later this month, right? You never answered my text about it, because you’re my worst hyung.”

“How could I ever miss that?” Hansol tries to ruffle at Chan’s hair in spite of his hat and he gets batted away. “I’m sure it’ll be great, dude, no worries.”

Joshua looks up from his screen at Seungkwan. “What about you? Do you go to school around here too?”

Hansol shifts as if to answer but Seungkwan beats him to it. “I did about two years at SNU for undergrad but then I quit,” he says breezily, and ignores the impulse to hunch his shoulders just a bit in embarrassment. “I’m from Jeju, and it was getting kind of expensive, so it made more sense to just work how I could here.”

“You’re from Jeju?” Hansol asks, and looks put out. “I didn’t know that.”

“We haven’t exactly had super long conversations before?” Seungkwan shoots back, smiling wryly. “But yeah, my whole family’s from the island. My sisters both work on the mainland, though, so it’s just my mom back home right now.”

Joshua nods. “I can understand that. I’m from the states,” he continues, in response to Seungkwan’s quizzical look, “and it’s just my mom back in California right now.”

Seungkwan hums in interest and it sparks a conversation about Joshua moving to Seoul from LA for university, Chan chiming in with side comments about when he first met Joshua when he was 19 and Joshua managed to sneakily get him completely wasted at practically every school party.

Hansol sits and listens, for the most part, picking at the skin at the edge of his fingernails absent-mindedly. He has nice hands, Seungkwan thinks to himself because he’s self-destructive and secretly a teenage girl. Square knuckles and long fingers, and a – oh. A faint smudge of freckles along the outside bump of one of his wrists. 

He stops listening to the conversation, but it sounds like Chan and Joshua are managing just fine without his input. It could be nothing, but hand marks were by far the most common soul marks. Freckles usually meant that the touch had neutral feelings behind it, too, so they were really common-place. They could be seen everywhere, and they could have come from almost anybody that a person had ever brushed up against in a tight hallway.

Seungkwan really didn’t have anything to be disappointed about, was the thing. If he thought hard enough about it he could almost picture Hansol with those freckles the first time they met, too, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. Something stings in Seungkwan’s chest, though, and he coughs slightly into his elbow to try to scratch it away.

“And really,” Joshua says, continuing whatever he and Chan had been talking about before, “I don’t know why you ever listen to Mingyu anyways. You know he’s just trying to mess with you.” He shifts, and shrugs his jacket down off his shoulders and hangs it off the back of his chair. He’s wearing a t-shirt underneath it, with some English logo on the front, and when he reaches forward to grab his pen back from Chan the sleeve rides up enough to reveal – holy shit.

Seungkwan lets out an accidental, soft gasp. Joshua has fairly clear skin, which makes the angry red line that splits from just above his elbow and up the back of his arm stand out even more. It looks like a slash with something sharp, not recent enough that it’s scabbed and shiny from healing but still stark and violent-looking.

Hansol glances over at him quickly, eyebrows furrowed, and the follows the direction of his eyesight to Joshua. “Oh fuck, Josh, that looks even worse today. Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?”

Joshua blinks and looks down at his arm, as if he had to remind himself that the mark was there. “Oh, right. Yeah, I’m serious, it doesn’t feel like anything.” He twists his arm so they can get a better look at it. “It’s weird, it’s almost numb sometimes.”

Chan whistles and pokes at the scar gingerly, then a bit more fully when Joshua doesn’t wince back from the touch. “How long have you had this? Hansol-hyung told me about it but I didn’t think it would look this bad.”

Joshua shrugs, and leans a bit farther back in his seat. He seems tired, all of a sudden. “Maybe three weeks now? Not long.”

Seungkwan feels lost. “Uh – are you ok? Do you need, like, an ace bandage or something?”

A pause, and then Joshua laughs a little bit – it still sounds just slightly weak. “Oh god, no, Seungkwan. I’m fine, it’s just – it’s my soul mark.”

 _Oh._ Seungkwan gulps back more questions, because – because he had always heard that scarred up soul marks were bad news. They meant that the first touch came with severe negative emotions, pain and anger and frustration. Hatred.

Hansol messes with the straw in his now-empty Americano. “Is it gonna look like that all the time? No offense, hyung, but you look like you got stabbed.”

Joshua huffs a laugh and self-consciously presses two fingers to where the mark starts by his shoulder. “I don’t know, we’ll see. There are studies that show that some marks respond more in real-time to the mentality of whoever put them there, you know. Like, scrapes that turned into scars later, or people who develop more freckles over time.” He shrugs, a wry twist to the side of his mouth. “All you can really do is wait and see.”

“I guess,” Hansol says, and he sucks loudly at the few drops of melted ice at the bottom of his cup. “It just always seems so stupid.”

Joshua shoots him the kind of look that someone gets when they’ve heard an argument a million times, but Hansol tips his chin up anyways as he continues. “I mean, if someone’s supposed to be your soulmate, what happens if you just bump into them on the street and then never see them again? Are you just screwed from the beginning? And with that thing,” and he waves vaguely at Joshua’s arm, “like, how’s that supposed to be a good sign for a relationship?”

Chan kicks lightly out at Hansol’s ankles under the table, looking uncomfortable. “It’s just, like, a guiding thing, hyung. It doesn’t have to be forever, or anything.”

Joshua hits a key at his computer. “He’s right, and really, if they’re your soulmate don’t you think you would see them again no matter what?” He fits his chin in one hand and tilts his head, looking at Hansol with a kind of piercing focus. “You’ll probably have similar interests, right? Or something in common, at least. Wouldn’t that mean you’d tend to drift back to the same circles?”

“Or maybe not,” Hansol counters, arms now crossed stubbornly against his chest. Seungkwan feels like he’s watching a particularly-heated tennis match. “What if they like everything you like, they’re fucking perfect for you, but they live in, like, India? The world’s just saying oh woops, that sucks, you’re just supposed to figure out where to go through some cosmic telepathy, but in the meantime you’re missing out on knowing this person?”

“You’re being really pissy about this right now, hyung,” Chan says lowly, picking at some peeling paint on the edge of the table.

Hansol blinks and then jerks slightly, looking quickly over at Seungkwan. “Shit, sorry. It’s just – “ he breaks off in a sigh and runs a hand through his hair. “My head’s, like, all over the place about this stuff right now. Josh looking like he got mugged isn’t helping.”

Seungkwan shrugs, not really loving how he’s the center of attention now. “I mean, it’s fine, everyone has different opinions about this stuff.” He shifts uneasily. “It’s just what… you do with it, I guess? There’s no right answer.”

Hansol just looks at him for a moment and then lets out a shallow sigh. “Right. Yeah, definitely, it’s just up to you.” Joshua snorts, but when they turn to look at him he’s buried behind his laptop again.

The radio goes from K.Will to an old S.E.S song and Seungkwan tangles his fingers together underneath the table.

+++

Seungkwan lives in a shoebox apartment that’s central enough within the city to make a case for the exorbitant rent that they get charged. They have a laundry room five floors down that always smells like mold, and sometimes the heating system cuts out for a few hours at a time, but it’s not bad. He tells his mom that it’s about twice the size that it actually is, but he figured he’s just stretching the truth – at least he’s not secretly living on the street.

He has two roommates, although in theory they’re only really supposed to have two people living in the apartment at all, so he likes to consider Seokmin the primary roommate because he actually cooks every now and then. Soonyoung lived with him first, though, and knew him the longest, and will remind him loudly about it whenever Seungkwan nags at him to put his dishes away.

Or at times like this.

“Could you two be any more gross?” Seungkwan whines, pushing at Soonyoung’s side with his feet from the other end of their crappy couch. Soonyoung sniffs haughtily and settles more firmly into Seokmin’s lap, chin tilted up like a prince.

“You’re just jealous, kid, I get it,” Soonyoung hisses in pain when Seungkwan gets a good jab at the soft part of his gut and curls closer to Seokmin who, for his part, looks highly amused by all this. “So violent today, who hurt you?”

Seokmin laughs in the loud, open-mouthed way he has and tightens his arms around Soonyoung’s waist. “Was work that terrible?”

Seungkwan huffs and gives up, sticking his feet between Seokmin and the back cushions and scrunching down against the arm of the couch. “It wasn’t that bad. A higher rate of drink spills than usual.” He bites at his lip, absent-minded. “It’s already March.”

Soonyoung looks at him askance, bottom lip still pouted out a bit. “Yeah? What, I know we didn’t forget your birthday, what’s up?”

“Just,” Seungkwan shifts so that he can see the TV, where they’re watching some crime drama that only Seokmin actually likes. “It’s gonna be marking season soon, it’s just weird that the winter went so quickly.”

Soonyoung barks out a laugh. “You sound like my mom telling me to not wear t-shirts on public transport, because I’ll end up marked with some random girl.” He squeaks, betrayed, when Seokmin pinches him on the arm.

“You never listened to her anyways, you brat,” he teases him, and then smacks a loud kiss on his cheek. “Just because you’re a childhood mark, you got all cocky.”

Seungkwan makes a dramatic noise of disgust, flapping his hands at the display. “This is why I can’t go a day without wallowing in the sadness of my single life. You two are the actual worst, why do I live with you.”

“You love us,” Soonyoung trills in a sing-song voice, taking the opportunity to nuzzle against the side of Seokmin’s face. “And we love you, because you’re our child.”

“You’re the worst parents, then,” Seungkwan collapses back against the arm of the couch. “Just because you’ve known about each other since you were, like, ten. Have some sympathy.”

“You sure you’re ok?” Seokmin takes a moment to physically lift Soonyoung off of him and deposit him gracelessly onto Seungkwan’s knees, where he immediately tumbles to the ground in a ball of pointy elbows. “You’re being really sentimental - like, more than usual.”

Seungkwan sticks his feet onto Seokmin’s lap, silently pleased with the free real estate that opened up as Soonyoung pulls himself up and stalks over to the kitchen, grumbling loudly about making ramyeon. “It’s nothing important, I’m just being dumb.”

Seokmin shoots him what Soonyoung always calls his ‘teacher’ look, the gentle eyebrow raise that he gives to his vocal students who don’t practice enough. “You sure? I won’t judge, I promise.” He tugs one of Seungkwan’s socks a bit further up his calf. “What’s going on?”

Seungkwan can feel his resolve slipping, but Seokmin just always looks so sincere. He looks back at the TV, taking a second to stall while a face wash CF plays in the background and Soonyoung bangs around in the kitchen. Finally, he sets his jaw. “What was it like, when you and Soonyoung realized you were matched?”

Seokmin’s a good friend, way better than Soonyoung, so he doesn’t laugh at the question or anything. Instead he nods, and his hands settle on Seungkwan’s feet. “Well. I mean, we _were_ young, so it was kind of different.” He thinks for a second. “It was mostly our parents, at first, telling us that we better get along and everything. We weren’t friends at the beginning, ‘cuz it was weird, you know? You’re just a kid and suddenly your parents are acting like you have to get married to some boy that you only know because he ran into you one day at school and then your bruise never went away.”

Seokmin pauses. “The thing was – eventually I realized the point of the soul mark thing. We _did_ have a lot in common, so we got along well once we were a bit older, and then it just kind of started being a matter of time.” He shrugs. “Soonyoung was stubborn, so he insisted that we couldn’t kiss or anything until we had each kissed someone else first. That way we knew it was legit.”

“Gross,” Seungkwan grumbles, although there’s no feeling behind it. “So, what, everything just worked out then?”

“Nothing ever ‘just works out’.” Seokmin grunts when Seungkwan kicks out at him. “I’m serious, like, this isn’t me just trying to act all wise and shit. Soonyoung and I’ve been friends for ages but he’s still annoying sometimes, and it’s always a bit weird to think that we’ve never really had the full option to be with anyone else. But I like him, and for right now that’s pretty good.”

Seungkwan huffs and settles his feet back again. “That’s good.”

Seokmin shoots him a look. “You know, you never answered my question.”

“What question?”

“What’s going on? With you,” He clarifies, and looks up at Soonyoung who stalks back into the room with a cup ramyeon and a stormy look on his face.

“How’s the heart to heart going?” Soonyoung asks and folds himself into whatever shape allows him to squish into the space left between Seungkwan’s legs and the back of the couch. “Did I miss anyone crying?”

“Nothing’s going on,” Seungkwan directs to Seokmin, and sits up to try to steal a bite of ramyeon. “It’s almost spring, you know I get all sappy around now.”

“Yeah,” Soonyoung holds his chopsticks away from Seungkwan, “but not quite so mopey. Usually you just start making heart eyes at some guy from the grocery store, or something.” He stops, blinks, and looks at Seungkwan, giving Seokmin the opportunity to grab the chopsticks and scoop up some noodles. “Oh my god. There’s a guy.” He elbows Seokmin, who chokes slightly on the food. “There’s a guy! Holy shit, there’s a guy.”

“Hyung,” Seungkwan barely manages to get out before Soonyoung shoves his cup at Seokmin and presses forward right into Seungkwan’s face.

“Who is it! Is he cute? How do you know him?” Soonyoung grabs Seungkwan’s wrists excitedly. “This is important information, our baby’s in love! Tell me everything.”

“Hyung,” Seungkwan tries again, and yanks with his hands but can’t get them out of Soonyoung’s grasp. “It’s not that serious, it’s just, it’s this guy who comes to the café sometimes,” Soonyoung squeals, “ _but_ he has marks already, so. No go.”

Soonyoung deflates slightly. “What? Ok, but, wait, start over, who is this guy even?”

“I don’t know, he’s a student,” Seungkwan ignores the way Soonyoung’s eyes brighten with every new piece of information, “and I’ve only talked to him a few times, it’s nothing big.” He pauses, and looks to the side. “He _is_ cute, though, way cuter than either of you.”

Soonyoung slaps him on the arm lightly. “Rude, but continue. A student? How many times has he come to the café that you know this much?”

“Just a few,” Seungkwan demurs. “He’s just, um. Friendly.” Soonyoung squawks and slaps his arm again. “Shut up, not like – I don’t know, not like however you’re thinking. He’s a nice guy,” he finishes, hands free now to twist together nervously.

“Ok, ok, but – he has marks? So what? Did he come in with a girlfriend or anything?”

Seungkwan tilts his head, thinking. “No? I mean, the first two times he came in he was by himself because it was barely light out, and the last time he was just with two friends.”

“Two friends?” Soonyoung asks, wiggling his eyebrows at him.

“I – I think so?” Now Seungkwan isn’t sure, and he feels the events of the other day turning over themselves in his head. “One of them had a soul mark too but it was from someone else, I think, and the other one… I don’t know, Hansol was just acting like he didn’t know who his marked person was.”

Now it’s Seokmin leaning forward, cup passed safely back to Soonyoung without spilling (more) on the couch. “Hansol? That’s this guy’s name?”

“Yeah.” The TV drones on, a car alarm blaring in the background of whatever tension-filled scene is happening then. “It’s really nothing, I’m just kind of. Stuck, I guess.” Seokmin is looking at him with something close to pity and it’s the last thing he feels like dealing with. “Just, never mind. It’s nothing.” He pulls his feet back and turns fully to face the TV, face hot with embarrassment.

He’s talked to Hansol three times. Seokmin and Soonyoung practically grew up together, they had years and years of shared experiences in addition to the surety of their shared marks. He folds his knees up to his chin and rests on them, eyes open but not seeing the TV.

+++

The sun’s high in the sky, clear and bright and just cold enough that Seungkwan has his nose buried in a thick knit scarf against the wind that buffets through the alleyway every few minutes. March has rolled through Seoul with quiet force, people trading their thick padded coats for lighter, brighter, more fashionable jackets and then carefully freezing on their way to shop or get something to eat.

It’s a rare day off, an unremarkable Tuesday, and Seungkwan’s on his own. He’s poking through a mixed-up rack of t-shirts at a street market when a familiar voice rings out behind him, cutting through the dull murmur of the other people on the street.

“Seungkwan! Hey!” He looks over his shoulder and Hansol appears as if out of nowhere, all ripped jeans and the widest grin he’s seen on anyone other than Seokmin. “I thought that was you. What’s up?”

Seungkwan blinks, caught off guard. “Um, hey. Just, you know,” he waves vaguely in the direction of the t-shirt rack, “Shopping? Kind of.”

Hansol laughs, his hands tucked in his back pockets. “It’s weird not seeing you in that apron. And, like, in the real world.”

“Hey.” Seungkwan shoots him a pointed look. “I’ll have you know that I do have a life when I’m not working.”

“Oh really?” Hansol leans a bit closer, shoulder knocking against Seungkwan. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any proof.”

“Look at me,” Seungkwan waves his hands again, broadly. “Out on the town, shopping ‘til I drop. Sometimes I even have friends with me,” he jokes, and earns himself another laugh from Hansol.

“You’re impressive,” he says, shaking his head a little. “What’re you doing now, though? You looked lonely, I had to come save you from hanging out all by yourself.”

Seungkwan snorts and reaches out to paw through the shirts again, not really looking for anything in particular. “I needed to get out of my apartment. My roommates decided that today was the day to renew their mark vows, aka sexiling me for probably a full day.”

Hansol whistles. “That’s ambitious of them.”

“You have no idea,” Seungkwan grumbles.

“Well,” Hansol starts, still close enough that Seungkwan imagines he can feel the heat of him through their jackets, “Mind if I bother you? I just got out of class, and I’m really not looking forward to doing the work that I should be doing.”

“Lazy.”

“No,” Hansol’s quick to defend himself, only slightly whiny, “it’s just grading for the class I TA. So, like, not the most fascinating stuff, you know?” He reaches out to feel the sleeve of one of the shirts Seungkwan’s looking through. “You’re more interesting, obviously.”

Seungkwan feels himself flush and he burrows a little deeper into his scarf. “Doesn’t sound like the highest bar to match.”

“You know, you’re really hard to compliment.” Hansol shoots him a grin, eyes soft. “Are you actually gonna buy anything?”

He really shouldn’t, was the thing. Seungkwan turned to eye the lines of street market stalls, thinking vaguely of the bank transfer he had to remember to send to his mom later that week after he got paid. “Nah, nothing’s really jumping out to me,” he responds, sticking his hands in his coat pockets to warm them up a bit. “I was just looking around, killing time.”

“Cool,” Hansol nods. “Y’wanna keep looking, then? Or,” he continues, making a face suddenly like he drank sour milk, “Actually, I kind of need help.” He flips his phone out from his pocket, thumbing in his passcode. “A hyung of mine from school has me on this mission, kind of.”

“Hm?” Seungkwan waits a second and then just takes it upon himself to lean over Hansol’s shoulder, peering at his phone. “What mission?”

“Here,” Hansol finds what he was looking for somewhere in a group message chat log and turns the phone so Seungkwan can see the screen better. It’s a screenshot from some online shopping website, showing the listing for a trendy-looking tan coat.

“He wants me to see if I can find anything cheaper than this,” Hansol explains, letting Seungkwan take the phone to zoom in on the picture. “It’s a present, I guess, and he’s too lazy to go shopping on his own.” He snorts, but it sounds fond. “He says it’s too cold out still for him to bother leaving the house.”

“And why would he when he has a dongsaeng as nice as you?” Seungkwan retorts, and hands the phone back. “That’s a pretty good present.”

“Yeah.” Hansol closes out of the group chat. “He’s trying to make things up with a friend of his, he says. Jeonghan-hyung can kind of be a dick sometimes so honestly it’s not that surprising, but normally he just realizes and gets all friendly for a while. He doesn’t usually, like, splurge like this.”

Seungkwan tilts his head. “You’re sure he’s just getting it for a friend?”

Hansol looks at him blankly for a second, and then snorts so hard that Seungkwan worries it was actually a sneeze for a second. “Jeonghan? Date anybody? No way.” He reaches around Seungkwan and presses a hand lightly on the back of his coat, urging him to follow as he starts to walk down the alley away from the street market. “He’s, uh, been kind of stuck on the same person for a while, and. Well, that one’s not happening now.”

Seungkwan tucks his hands in his pockets to halt any threat of an urge to touch Hansol. “Why not?”

Hansol shoots him a wry look. “The other person has a soul mark now. Which is new, and it’s just made Jeonghan all weird lately.”

They exit the alley and emerge in the main street, deep in the shopping district so they’re immediately pressed in on by teenage girls and people who obviously have somewhere to be very, very quickly. Hansol keeps his hand on Seungkwan’s back and Seungkwan finds himself tucked into his side. Thank god for the cold because his ears are definitely red right now, but at least he has something to blame it on.

“So,” Seungkwan starts, ducking closer to get away from a particularly large mob of girls, “That’s a deal breaker for him, I assume. The soul mark?”

“I guess.” They pull to a stop at the window of a clothing store, and Hansol peers at the mannequin with furrowed eyebrows. “I didn’t realize he was that much of a traditionalist, but ever since the other person got marked they’ve barely talked to each other.”

“Do you know who the other person got marked by?”

“Nah, I wasn’t there, and he won’t tell me.” Hansol shifts. “D’you think they sell coats here?” A pause. “Seungkwan,” and he’s turning towards him, eyes large and slightly panicked, “Dude, I have no idea what stores sell what. Jeonghan will maybe actually literally kill me if I don’t look, though.”

Seungkwan can’t help but laugh. “You kind of have to actually go in the store to tell, sometimes.” He laughs harder when Hansol just blinks at him. “We can just go and ask someone who works there. They won’t bite, I promise.”

Only a quick reflexive thought keeps him from instinctively grabbing Hansol’s hand to pull him into the store, and so instead his hand hangs in the air awkwardly for a second before pulling back into his pocket. Seungkwan turns quickly, instead, leaving Hansol to trail after him.

The store does sell coats but nothing like the one Hansol needs, and Seungkwan eventually gives up on him and just lets him follow while Seungkwan parades them through the next few stores they come across. None of them have anything either, and the last one that has something close is selling it for almost double what the website that Jeonghan sent a link to is, so that’s a bust too.

By that point the sun has gone down in the sky, bringing dusk and the glare of streetlights and neon signs. Seungkwan ducks out of the last store and brings his hands up to blow hot breath on them – the cold crept in when the sun went down, and he wasn’t thinking enough to bring gloves that morning when Soonyoung had trapped him in the kitchen and explained that he really, really needed to find something else to do that day.

Hansol exits after him and joins him in leaning against the front window of the last store, hands in his pockets. Seungkwan watches as a few flakes of snow slowly drift down from the sky, a little late in the season.

“Thanks.” Hansol sounds a bit tired, voice a little husky like the first time he came to the café. “Seriously, you didn’t have to use your day off to babysit me.” He reaches to scratch at the back of his neck, and huffs out something that’s half-sigh, half-laugh. “And we didn’t even find anything.”

Seungkwan shrugs. “I wasn’t really doing anything else, anyways. You’re welcome for gracing you with my presence, though.” Hansol laughs, and stretches his hands in front of him. The dusting of freckles is still there on the outside bump of his left hand, about the size of a quarter but thickly placed until they disperse at the edges.

Maybe it’s the fact that he just walked through six different clothing stores and didn’t buy anything, and he’s feeling a little dizzy from all the black and white striped sweaters. Maybe it’s the fact that he hasn’t had dinner yet, and his stomach is beginning to make that known. Maybe he just has a death wish. “Is that your mark?”

Hansol freezes. He turns to look at Seungkwan, but Seungkwan sweeps his eyes down to stare at the pavement. The snow has begun to collect, just barely, into a faint dusting on the concrete.

Hansol shifts and clasps his right hand over his other wrist, covering the freckles. The silence is loud with passing chatter and taxis speeding by.

“Yeah, it is.” Hansol sounds – Seungkwan doesn’t know. Not happy, that’s for sure. Awkward, and hesitant, and resigned.

More silence, and Seungkwan realizes Hansol’s waiting on him to speak. For once in his life he doesn’t know what to stay. Instead he shifts his eyes up to look at the closest streetlight, the snow silhouetted against the light and beginning to fall heavier now. He breaths out, and it clouds in front of him in a thick fog.

“Do you know who it is?” Seungkwan keeps looking at the light, and when he blinks the bright shape of it is imprinted on his eyelids.

Another pause. “No. I haven’t had it long, maybe a month, but I don’t know how recently I’d gotten it when I finally noticed it was there.” Hansol moves to uncover the mark with his hand, and Seungkwan’s eyes can’t help but skip down to look at it. “Ones like these are common, you know? So I didn’t even see I had it ‘till Chan pointed it out one day.”

“Makes sense.” Seungkwan doesn’t know why he’s being such a brat. He has literally no claim over this boy, no stain of a birth mark on his own skin to mirror him. “Are you looking?”

“For what?” Seungkwan looks up and meets Hansol’s confused eyes with something close to a glare.

“For your soulmate? I’m sure they’re looking for you. You already have the mark, so it’s not like they’re in a different country.” Seungkwan shifts to face Hansol straight on. “And if it was that recently you can probably narrow it down to Seoul. So. You’re pretty lucky, as far as things go.”

Hansol’s jaw tightens. “I don’t have to be looking for them. I’m not obligated to.” Seungkwan huffs, which only serves to make Hansol take a step forward and fist his hands at his sides. “I’m serious. Marks don’t mean anything, Seungkwan. It’s just – it’s like Josh was saying, they’re just a guideline. It’s all chance, anyways. Maybe someone goes through life and never get a mark. Does that mean they’re just destined to be unhappy?”

“Maybe it does,” Seungkwan shoots back, and already feels guilt curling low in his stomach but he can’t stop himself. The thought that someone out there is meant to be with Hansol but will never find him because he’s not looking himself has him sick with sympathy. “I just – I don’t get it. You practically have a guarantee that there’s someone reasonably close to you that you could be the happiest with, and you’re not even going to try?”

“It’s not that easy,” and Hansol’s definitely mad now, which is the strangest look on him. His smile is completely gone and his shoulders are hunched. “Why are you so upset about this, anyways? It has nothing to do with you.”

“So what,” and oh god, his throat is starting to hitch closed and he can feel pressure building behind his eyes. He’s not going to fucking cry over this. “Maybe I’m just concerned that you’re having some dumb lapse of judgement, and you’re going to totally miss your chance.”

“I don’t care about that!” Hansol takes another step forward and then stops, looks to the side, brings a hand up to push his hair back roughly. He takes a breath. “Seriously, Seungkwan, it’s just. It’s not that important to me. If it’s meant to be then maybe I’ll bump into them again, but for now I’d rather focus on people that actually _are_ in my life.”

Hansol wasn’t that far away to begin with, but now he’s close enough that Seungkwan can see his throat bob when he swallows. A few snowflakes are caught in his dark hair, his shoulders look tense and his left hand is still clenched at his side. His jeans are ripped at the knees and look kind of dumb with his sneakers and jacket, like he learned how to dress himself at 19 and never bothered to change anything.

He looks handsome despite everything and Seungkwan is so, so fucked, and he should have known from the very beginning. He thought Hansol was just as cute when he was a stranger in a puffy coat, ugly hat, and days’ worth of dark circles.

Hansol looks back at him and Seungkwan doesn’t know what he sees on his face. He can feel his eyes growing hot with held back, frustrated, embarrassed tears. He looks awful when he cries, he knows that from lots (and lots) of experience.

A snowflake falls wetly in one of his eyes and he blinks it away, and when he opens his eyes again Hansol’s suddenly much closer. He’s a few inches taller than Seungkwan, and maybe a little taller than that in the thick soles of his sneakers. He carefully slips a hand up to cup the back of Seungkwan’s neck, thumb sliding through the hair in front of his ear as carefully as anything. Seungkwan’s feet feel like they’ve stuck completely to the pavement.

“Right now,” Hansol says, and it’s close to a whisper. There’s not enough breath behind the words to freeze the air into condensation, and his thumb presses warmly on Seungkwan’s skin. “Right now, I’d rather do this,” and then he ducks down to kiss Seungkwan.

His hands hang limply at his sides but a shiver almost immediately runs down his spine. Hansol’s pressed close, and his lips are cold but quickly warm when he moves them, carefully, barely, against Seungkwan’s. His right hand is still up at Seungkwan’s neck but his other one slips to press against the small of his back, and it feels like a question.

Seungkwan doesn’t want to answer it. He feels like when he was 17, waiting on the call from SNU that would tell him whether he was accepted or not, and for a split second he had preferred the uncertainty of the phone ringing to picking it up and having to face reality. He sways a little into Hansol, takes the soft noise that Hansol makes when he presses a bit harder against his mouth and wraps it up deep in his chest, tucked behind his ribs.

Then he carefully, slowly pulls away. Hansol’s hand tightens on his back but doesn’t stop him from moving, and when Seungkwan’s far enough away he can see the look on Hansol’s face. His eyes have the bright edge of something shining in them, but it also might just be the reflection of the streetlight.

“I can’t.” Seungkwan’s voice catches halfway through, and already he misses the warmth of Hansol against his front. Sharp guilt slashes at his stomach when Hansol recoils, just a bit. “I like you, I do, I just - ”

His words stop there. He just what? Just likes Hansol, likes him so much, but would never be able to forget the fact that there’s someone out there who is so much more perfect for him? Would never really be able to look past the quick judgements of people who ask to see his mark and he has nothing to show for it?

“I can’t.”

Hansol’s hands had frozen in the air, displaced from Seungkwan taking a step away, and now they jerk back to be shoved in his jacket pockets. He takes a second to say anything, and Seungkwan just stops himself from squirming in place. “I’m – okay. Okay. Sorry,” and he ducks his head down, and the vulnerable whorl of hair at the top of his head makes Seungkwan want to kiss him again. “That was probably, um, presumptive of me.”

“No, it’s ok.” Seungkwan’s fingers twitch at his sides, because Hansol suddenly looks entirely blank and he doesn’t like any of that. The street has mostly emptied out by this point, thank goodness, but a passing car’s headlights blare against Hansol’s face.

Finally, Hansol lets out a breath. “Okay. Um, I’m gonna,” he jerks a thumb over his shoulder – his right hand, because the left one with the freckles has stayed in his pocket since Seungkwan pushed him away. “I’m just gonna go.”

“Okay.” The snow is heavy enough now that Seungkwan’s face is wet, anyways, when he watches Hansol’s back as he heads off in the opposite direction.


	2. part 2

March dragged on, and the snow melted into grey slush that then melted into slow trickles of water down storm drains. Eventually spring came for good, with sudden rainstorms and a gentle thawing of the air. Seungkwan picked up shifts at the café almost every day, and eventually stopped jumping when the bell above the door rang out and someone entered.

Hansol hadn’t been back since that night.

It was dumb to think he would come back, anyways.

The night everything happened Seungkwan had walked the opposite direction, gotten on a bus that was a little out of the way but wouldn’t stop anywhere near where Hansol might be, climbed up the flights of stairs to his apartment and promptly collapsed onto his bed. By that point Seokmin and Soonyoung were done with whatever they had been doing all day, which meant they had plenty of time to be overly-concerned about his wellbeing.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Seokmin had told him lowly, and rubbed his back while he pretended not to notice Seungkwan’s hitching breaths. “He’s just one guy, you know? There’ll be others.”

“You’re a good kid,” Soonyoung had said, and collapsed onto his back where he clung like a baby koala, thoroughly suffocating Seungkwan in his pillow. “Just ‘cuz he’s a jerk and couldn’t see that doesn’t mean no one else will.”

“Hyung, _I_ rejected _him_ ,” Seungkwan reminded him, voice muffled with tears and snot and pillowcase. “He’s the nicest guy maybe ever and he _kissed me_ and I just told him no, who does that?”

“Someone who wants the best for other people,” Seokmin said tersely, and tapped him on the head softly with his knuckles. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re just too nice,” Soonyoung crooned, but sounded more sincere than usual. “What’ll we do with you, you’re the sweetest.”

Eventually they had convinced him to emerge from his room and watch TV with them, something funny and slapstick instead of the romantic melodramas he (and Soonyoung) preferred. They tucked him in between each of them on the couch and buried him under a blanket and Soonyoung’s legs, which were flung over his lap in a way that wanted to look haphazard but were coupled with careful fingers combing through the hair at the nape of his neck.

Rather than being overwhelming, being suffocating, it was like coming home. Seungkwan sniffed his way through half a roll of tissues, and his face was swollen as hell the next day, but the rawness of it all smoothed by the end of the week.

Hyerin-noona had stared at him with her usual piercing gaze, looked him over a few times as if convinced he was secretly sick but wasn’t telling her, and then put him on inventory duty for half of his shift that next day. He counted over their stock, checked boxes on the paperwork, and when things slowed down for the early afternoon he wiped down tables and shot strained smiles towards customers.

And Hansol didn’t come back to the café.

Seungkwan wasn’t sleeping that well. A week or so after it all had happened he had a twisting, confusing, half-remembered dream that consisted of him hiding in an abandoned high school while whispering forms moved outside of the classroom. The only real things he remembered at the end were quick movements, arms squeezing around his waist, and the sudden realization that he was on top of the school, after all, and Hansol was tipping them back off the roof to drop towards the ground.

He had woken up in a start and hadn’t really managed to get back to sleep after that.

But spring floats in and Seungkwan can finally leave his thicker coat behind when he goes to work. The longer days and warmer weather do wonders for his mood, and he pisses Hyerin off by playing Cherry Blossom Ending three times in a row one day when the sun is particularly bright out.

“It’s not even April yet,” she admonishes him, and switches to a Western pop station.

“It might as well be,” he whines. “We’re almost there, and people like to hear this song.”

“Not on loop.” Hyerin leans next to him on the counter and levels a look at him. Her bangs are curled a little today, and she crosses her arms. “You’re feeling better, then?”

Seungkwan blinks at her, caught off guard, but he recovers quickly. “Have you been worried about me, noona?”

“Shut up.” Her look turns into a glare, and she pinches him in the soft skin above his elbow, making him yelp. “I’m trying to be nice. You’ve been weird, lately, weirder than normal.”

He pouts and rubs the sore spot on his arm but takes a second to think. By that point it’s been maybe three weeks since the night everything happened. Soonyoung has managed to keep him busy at the times he’s not working with increasingly ridiculous trips to the supermarket, and Seokmin has been cooking for them way more than usual. It’s all too sincere to seem pitying, so Seungkwan has been relishing in the attention for now.

The dreams have stopped, too. So at least he’s not constantly reminded of everything even when he’s unconscious.

So. Maybe he is feeling better. “It’s all fine, noona. It’s spring, you can’t be in a bad mood in the spring.”

“You’d be surprised.” She shoots a grumpy look towards the door. “You need to take a few opening shifts back eventually; we’ve been getting some increased morning traffic from under-caffeinated assholes.”

“You’re the one who tells me when to come in, that’s your fault if you can’t deal with them.” Hyerin pinches him again, lighter this time, and spins off to take an order at the cash register. Seungkwan makes drinks, reheats pastries, and eventually convinces Hyerin to at least put an Apink album on.

(Hansol doesn’t come to the café that day either.)

That night, Seungkwan’s on the closing shift, and he’s just finished stacking the chairs on the tabletops when the bell above the door rings out.

“Seungkwannie!” Soonyoung’s voice is way too loud in the silent café, and Seungkwan barely manages to not drop the handle of the mop from how hard he startles.

“Hyung!”

Soonyoung steps into the café like he owns the place, with Seokmin trailing after him with a grin and one hand holding his boyfriend’s. “Don’t worry, my precious dongsaeng,” Soonyoung directs towards Seungkwan, and flings his free arm out to address the entire (empty) café. “We’re here to save you from slaving away for your evil step-mother. Put down that mop,” he points magnanimously, “because we’re going drinking.”

“Oh god,” Seungkwan groans, and turns away to finish wiping up the last corner of the main seating area. “I have work on Sunday still, you know, we don’t all have weekends off.”

“It’ll be fun,” Seokmin adds, “We won’t keep you out long. Soonyoung’ll buy?” He adds, seemingly as a last-ditch effort.

Seungkwan turns around to see Seokmin shooting Soonyoung a wide-eyed, pleading look, and for a second Soonyoung levels a glare at him before rolling his eyes.

“Yeah, sure. I’m the best hyung and the best boyfriend, and you better not forget it.” He rocks up on his toes to smack a kiss onto Seokmin’s mouth, and Seokmin responds quickly and happily.

Seungkwan makes sure to make a dramatic gagging noise as he packs the mop up in the utility closet. “You’re doing a really shitty job of convincing me right now.”

“C’mon,” Soonyoung moves more quickly than Seungkwan expects and slings an arm over his shoulder. “I promise I’ll behave myself. It’ll be fun, we haven’t just relaxed outside the apartment together in forever. Maybe we can go to karaoke, we can sing SNSD together.” He nuzzles against Seungkwan’s cheek in a way he thinks is cute but really just makes both of their hair go all staticky. “First, though, we gotta get meat.”

They end up heading to a samgyupsal place down the street that they used to go to all the time, back when Seungkwan was Soonyoung’s junior at SNU and Seokmin was ‘the one guy with the nose’ (“What do you mean, he’s your soul mate?”). The tables are always a little sticky towards the end of the week but Soonyoung swears that’s how you know it’s a good place, so they settle down at one spot towards the back corner.

Seungkwan and Seokmin sit with their backs to the wall as Soonyoung flops down on the other side and immediately rattles off to the ahjumma their order. “Soju, too, my friend needs cheering up,” Soonyoung adds at the end, and pats Seungkwan’s hand. “Don’t make that face. I’m being nice, aren’t I?”

“So nice,” he grumbles, but already feels the warmth of the restaurant and the familiar sight of the side dishes being placed down doing their job of relaxing him slightly. He picks up his chopsticks and snags a pickled radish before either of the others can move, and pops it into his mouth. “What did I do to get such nice parents?”

“Watch it,” Seokmin laughs. “I’ll tell your mom you’re being unfaithful, and some horrible Seoul couple has forcefully adopted you.”

Soonyoung sticks his tongue out at the both of them. “Seungkwan’s mom loves me, and you both know it. She’d be glad that I’m taking care of her darling only son.”

Seungkwan rolls his eyes, but he can’t really argue. His mom has never visited him in Seoul, had never really been able to make it work for them both, but she’d video chatted with him enough times to give Soonyoung a chance to burst in and interrupt them.

He was pretty sure she had at least guessed at Soonyoung and Seokmin being soulmates, even if they had never said it outright, and she hadn’t treated them any differently than usual so far. Just tutted at them all over the grainy FaceTime camera and asked them when the last time they’d eaten was, and if they had proper kimchi or if she should send more. It was nice, the idea that maybe a similar situation with him wouldn’t be a total heartbreak for her.

The soju comes and Seungkwan pours for them all. Soonyoung almost immediately throws his back and motions for Seungkwan to do the same, and as he feels the burn in his stomach he realizes belatedly that this might be a bad idea, given that he hasn’t eaten since at least seven hours ago. He keeps snacking on side dishes to compensate, and eventually the meat arrives too, thickly layered on the plates.

“Seokmin-hyung,” Seungkwan whines, and puts on his best cute face. “Please grill it, Soonyoung-hyung would just forget it and burn everything, you know that.”

Seokmin barks out his loud laugh and takes the tongs from his boyfriend, who kicks at him under the table and only narrowly misses his crotch. “You’re probably right.”

“I’m taking that as a grievous insult to both my pride and the pride of the entire Kwon family.” Soonyoung shoots this towards Seungkwan, and waves his empty soju glass at him. “Plus, I haven’t been refilled yet.”

The restaurant was loud when they first got there and it’s settled now into a dull roar of everyone else’s conversations. It’s late, after 10, so it’s starting to be mostly the drunk student and businessman crowd. Soonyoung carries on an endless stream of chatter as Seokmin snips the samgyupsal into strips and Seungkwan settles against the wall, occasionally taking sips of soju now that he has more food in his stomach.

He has his eyes down on his phone, flipping through some pictures one of his sisters sent him of her new puppy to show Seokmin, when he hears them.

“Nooo, you did good, we didn’t even notice you mess up, I promise.”

“Eh, hyung, you have to say that. I’m not saying I sucked or anything, I just have more to work on.”

“I thought you were good, Channie, you’ve gotten a lot better since you were in the university dance club.”

Seungkwan’s gut swoops down like he just went off the drop of a rollercoaster and he tenses against Seokmin’s side. He doesn’t want to look up.

“You guys _have_ to say that. Especially ‘cuz Hansol-hyung can’t dance for shit, so anything looks good to him.” There’s a dull thwapping noise, as if someone hit someone else on the shoulder, and then a yelp.

Seungkwan realizes he’s been quiet for too long when Seokmin nudges his shoulder against him gently, and looks quizzical. “You ok?” He’s peering down at him, eyes dark and concerned, and apparently Seungkwan’s managed to sink down further behind the table subconsciously because his head is basically at Seokmin’s collarbones.

Soonyoung is looking at him too, eyes squinted almost shut. “What’s wrong? You haven’t had that much to drink yet, wake up.”

Seungkwan shakes his head, but he can’t help but search the area of the restaurant behind Soonyoung. His eyes skip over the tables of businessmen half-out of their suit coats, and he finds them soon enough.

The three of them are on the other side of the restaurant, maybe two tables away from theirs. The slim figure with his back to them is Joshua, probably, while facing them on the other side of the table is Chan (white button-up shirt, hair flattened at the temples with dried sweat, pout firmly in place) and, next to him, Hansol.

Seungkwan’s stomach twists. Hansol’s leaning back on his hands, looking comfortable and at ease in a nicer shirt than he’s ever seen him in before and a wide grin. He looks like he’s teasing Chan, nudging at his side and saying something that Seungkwan can’t make out. He looks perfectly happy.

“Hey,” and Seokmin’s shaking him again, because now Seungkwan’s face is basically squished against his arm in an attempt to hide. “Seriously, what’s up?” Seokmin follows the line of his gaze and frowns. “What? Do you know them?”

Soonyoung immediately twists backwards in his seat and Seungkwan all but shoots over the table top to grab his shirt and yank him back. Seokmin makes loud noises about watching out for the hot grill, flapping a hand at them.

“Do you know them? Who is it?” Soonyoung’s wearing a particularly baggy sweatshirt – it might actually be Seokmin’s – so he ends up having plenty of wiggle room even with Seungkwan managing to grab a fistful of the fabric. He cranes his neck back over his shoulder, searching the room. “Who’re you looking at? Those guys behind us?”

“Hyung, please shut up for once,” Seungkwan hisses, and finally gets Soonyoung to turn back to face them.

“Is it them?” Soonyoung looks ten times more alive all of a sudden, because he’s an asshole who loves gossip and Seungkwan should never have agreed to move in with him when his last roommate up and left those years ago. “How do you know them? What’d they do, threaten you? Should Seokmin go beat them up?”

“Hey,” Seokmin interjects, but is ignored. Seungkwan shifts in his seat and carefully takes a sip of soju before huffing and settling against the wall. He risks one more glance at the other table, where Hansol now seems deeply invested in grilling and not looking anywhere near them.

“Don’t get all weird, hyung.” He closes his eyes in a preemptive wince. “Hansol’s over there.”

There’s a weighty pause, and with his eyes shut he can’t see the expression on the others’ faces, but it’s only a few seconds before Soonyoung’s slams his hands against the table, rocking the plates a little bit with the force.

“What the hell?” Soonyoung hisses it, just under his breath enough that it can kind of be classified as quiet, and Seungkwan opens his eyes to see him looking as if he’ll vibrate out of his seat any second now.

“Don’t you dare turn around,” Seungkwan warns him, and points a chopstick at his face. “I will literally murder you if you turn around right now, hyung.”

“You can’t do this to me,” Soonyoung whines, face pinched. “I didn’t get a good look at them and I can’t die without ever seeing the face of this kid that broke my favorite son’s heart.”

“Don’t _say_ that, hyung,” Seungkwan complains, as Seokmin uses his height and better seating position to peer slightly around Soonyoung’s head towards the other table.

“Which one is he?” To his credit, Seokmin has managed to understand the concept of an ‘indoor voice’ much better than his boyfriend.

“The, I don’t know, the one facing us with like the hair and everything,” Seungkwan mutters, pained. “On the right.”

“With the hair and everything,” Soonyoung mocks under his breath, and stabs at a piece of lettuce with his chopsticks. “Seokmin, paint me a beautiful word picture of this punk.”

“Uh,” Seokmin mutters, shifting a little to get a better look. “I don’t know, mostly normal? Dark hair, small face, not horribly ugly?”

“That was so poetic, sweetie.” Soonyoung rolls his eyes and then turns to look at Seungkwan. “So? What should we do? D’you want to leave?”

Seungkwan blinks at him. “What? No, no, I can’t just run away anytime I bump into someone I – uh, I have issues with.”

Soonyoung frowns, mouth twisted to the side. Sometimes Seungkwan gets swept up in how funny Soonyoung likes to be and forgets times like this, when he looks serious and concerned out of nowhere. “Yeah, but I don’t want you to feel stuck here. You sure?”

Seungkwan pulls a smile out from somewhere, and nods. “Sure. I don’t think splitting a bottle of soju really counts as ‘going drinking’, anyways, so we have work to do, hyung.” He lifts his soju cup and gestures it at Soonyoung, who takes a second to think before scrubbing a hand through his hair and huffing a laugh.

“I’m supposed to be the bad influence, brat,” he scolds him good-naturedly and picks his cup up too. “Alright, then, to not letting punks ruin our good night!” Soonyoung declares, clinking his shot glass against Seungkwan’s.

Seungkwan smiles and downs the rest of his shot, which was only maybe a quarter full at that point anyways. He lets Seokmin make him a lettuce wrap with too much kimchi in it and pretends that his eyes don’t roam back over to look at Hansol occasionally.

It’s hard, though. It had been long enough, and he had been trying to make a point of not thinking about him for long enough that he forgot the exact angle his eyes curved when he grinned wide at something Joshua was saying. Seungkwan feels like a character in a drama, staring across a crowded room at their loved one, only Hansol wasn’t some picture-perfect actor. He keeps shoving overstuffed samgyupsal wraps in his mouth, making his cheeks bulge out like a chipmunk, and his hair hangs a little limply on his forehead from a long day of being half-heartedly styled.

Seungkwan settles a little more firmly against Seokmin’s side and lets him pour another shot. He’s not drunk, definitely not, but he’s feeling warm. His ears are burning a little, especially his left one, and it feels kind of like a sunburn, or that one time he got an ill-advised piercing. He rubs at it absently, and nods at the right places as Soonyoung and Seokmin argue about something.

They work their way through more soju. Things empty out a little, and Soonyoung ends up ordering them ramen, too. Things quiet. Seungkwan can hear more, now.

“Has Sofia been bothering you about it?” It’s Joshua, voice soft but pronunciation clear enough to ring out across the room. Seungkwan refuses to look up, instead traces the ring of water condensed on the surface of the table.

“Not really.” A pause, and Seungkwan can practically picture the awkward way that Hansol shrugs. “It’s mostly my mom, but I think she thinks she’s just being supportive. She wants me to go to a specialist about it.”

“Jisoo-hyung needs that way more than you,” and that’s Chan, voice light. “His arm doesn’t look any better these days.”

“We’re not talking about me. We don’t have to talk about any of it, you know.” Joshua’s voice drops off a bit, and Seungkwan risks a glance up. He’s leaning on one arm, shifted to the side, and Hansol is poking at his bowl of rice with his head tilted down.

“I’d really rather not,” Hansol grunts out.

Joshua shifts and holds a hand out towards him, across the table. “Can I see it again?”

Seungkwan freezes against the wall of the restaurant and waits, breathless, as Hansol makes a face but then reaches his arm out. Joshua takes it, and twists his hand so that the outside knob of his wrist faces up.

They’re far away but Seungkwan can see the smudge of the mark, darker than the rest of the skin of his arm.

Seokmin shifts and looks down at him. “That it?”

Seungkwan nods carefully and Soonyoung glances up from eating. “What?” He swallows and makes a face. “You guys can’t talk about shit I’m not allowed to see, it’s rude.”

Seungkwan feels sick, slightly, watching Joshua pass the pad of his thumb over the leopard spot of freckles dotting Hansol’s wrist. His ears are burning. He swallows, and there’s no way he made any noise, nothing close to being loud enough to get any attention, but just then – Hansol looks up.

At him.

The room doesn’t freeze, suddenly silent, like it does in movies. Seungkwan’s vision tunnels, though, and he can’t breathe for a second. Hansol looks struck, and doesn’t look away when Seungkwan decides that no, fuck this, and scrambles up off the floor.

“Hey,” Soonyoung starts, but Seungkwan’s fingers tremble and he shakes his head at him.

“Just, just a second, hyung, I just need some air, I’ll be back,” he stutters out, and practically trips over Seokmin as he rushes to the back of the restaurant. There’s an employee exit back by the bathrooms, where he figured it would be, and it opens easily when he tries the door knob.

Seungkwan emerges in the back alley of the street the restaurant is situated on, the air damp but not freezing. He pants, dumb adrenaline still coursing through his veins, and leans against the brick wall of the building

He should have predicted it, but he didn’t, and so he jumps when the door swings open only a few seconds after he got outside. There’s a second of Hansol standing there, backlit and silhouetted, where Seungkwan imagines maybe he’s someone else, just coming out for a smoke break, but the image shatters when the door shuts and the two of them are left in the dark, the only light coming from the streetlamps down the road.

The silence of the alley when he was used to the dull throb of conversation in the restaurant is like being dunked in ice cold water. Hansol’s eyes are even darker in the light out here, and he’s standing like he had expected having to sprint – ready, poised to take off.

They look at each other, and Seungkwan feels the scratch of brick against his palms as he flattens them against the wall.

Then. “Hi.” Hansol sounds like he’s talking to a wild animal, and he has a hand slightly raised in the air between them. “Look, before you – before you say anything, I’m not gonna try to start anything, I promise. I just thought… I don’t know,” he stutters to a stop and rubs at the back of his neck. “Can we talk?”

Seungkwan blinks at him. Finds his voice somewhere in the back of his throat. “Talk about what?”

“You know.” Hansol kicks at the ground and shrugs. “Everything. Me being a complete idiot.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Seungkwan starts, but Hansol barks out a short laugh and looks back at him.

“Obviously I am, or you wouldn’t have just tried to run out of there like the place was on fire.” He stuffs his hands in his pockets and stays where he is, about six feet away. “I didn’t realize you were here.”

“I did,” Seungkwan mutters, and looks at his shoes. The soju is just enough to make his words come a little quicker, without much thinking, and his ears are still burning. “I didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”

“Oh.” Hansol shifts, and Seungkwan takes a mental note of the fact that he’s in a nicer pair of jeans than last time he saw them, darker wash with no holes in them. He was at Chan’s dance showcase, probably, he must have wanted to look nicer. The sentiment behind the gesture makes his chest warm in a way that signals that maybe he wasn’t as successful at getting over Hansol as he thought.

“Look, I was being kind of a jerk, I get that.” Hansol ruffles his hair a bit, and it falls a little spiky on his forehead in a way that tells stories of attempts at styling it with gel. “I won’t blame you if you don’t really want to see me anymore.”

Seungkwan makes a noise, tries to interject although he doesn’t know what he would say, but Hansol barrels on through to finish his thought. “No, seriously, I would totally get it. I had a crush, I acted like a teenager, whatever.” He blows out a breath. “I like you, though. Like, as a person. A friend, I guess. And I don’t want to think you just hate me forever if you don’t.”

“I don’t _hate_ you,” Seungkwan manages to get out, before they both freeze at the sudden sound of loud voices on the other side of the door.

“Stop it, we’re in _public_ , you’re being immature.”

“You won’t fucking talk to me, Jisoo, what do you think I should do?”

Hansol takes one look at the door before spinning back around, wide eyed, and grabs Seungkwan by the arm. “C’mere, quick,” he says, and barely has time to pull them around the corner of the building Seungkwan was leaning on when the side door bangs open again.

Hansol and Seungkwan both end up crouched around the corner of the brick building across the alley from the restaurant, backs pressed to the wall. Seungkwan glances at Hansol, completely confused at this point, but Hansol is peering around the corner with an expression set in concern.

The voices from earlier ring out louder in the silence. “Alright, I’m here, you got me, what is it?” Seungkwan jumps, recognizing that voice all of a sudden – it’s Joshua, the clear thread of his tone harsh with frustration.

“You know what it is, don’t act dumb.” That voice is unfamiliar, and Seungkwan shifts to look around the corner alongside Hansol. It’s dark and they’re low enough to the ground that he likes to imagine they’re being sneaky, and when he finally gets far enough over to look it’s obvious that the two people won’t notice them any time soon.

It is Joshua – backed up against the same wall Seungkwan was, hands straight by his sides and clenched into fists. The other person is tall, slender, with high cheekbones and artfully tousled hair that he messes up even further with an angry pass through it with his fingers.

Hansol’s hand is still gripping Seungkwan’s arm, just above his wrist, and his fingers twitch in warning as Seungkwan moves enough to be able to see. “Jeonghan-hyung,” Hansol whispers with barely any voice behind it, so soft that if Seungkwan’s ear wasn’t only inches away from his mouth he would never be able to hear it.

Seungkwan must make some expression of recognition, because Hansol turns back to face the scene unfolding. The name’s familiar enough, although it was definitely not the part of the day that he’d remembered the most – it’s Hansol’s hyung that sent him on the coat hunt.

“Seriously, Jeonghan, you can’t just – “ Joshua breaks off as Jeonghan shoots out a hand to grab his arm, just above the elbow.

“Jisoo,” and now he sounds near pleading. “Can I just – can I see it?”

A tense pause, and then Joshua lets out a shaky breath. “Just – Jeonghan, it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Jeonghan’s hands move to the hem of Joshua’s sweatshirt and tug, but Joshua bats them away to pull it off himself, leaving him in just a t-shirt. He holds onto the sweatshirt, balled up in between them, while Jeonghan pulls on his elbow to hold his scarred, marked arm closer to the light.

Hansol’s grip on Seungkwan’s arm tightens even more and before he thinks about it Seungkwan slides his own hand down to thread his fingers between Hansol’s.

“Jeonghan, I swear, it doesn’t hurt or anything,” Joshua is babbling, as Jeonghan just stands, looking at the mark. His fingers shake a little as they trace the bottom edge of the gash, which looks about the same as it did when Seungkwan first saw it those weeks ago.

Jeonghan breathes in, looks at Joshua with wide eyes. “I did this?”

Hansol jolts a little, falls backwards just a bit to lean against Seungkwan.

Joshua’s mouth twists. “I… I think so.”

“How is that fucking possible?” Jeonghan demands, but his fingers remain light where they’re still touching the scar. “That was nowhere near the first time I’ve touched you. How does that make any sense? We’ve been friends for years now, we were hooking up – “

“ _Jeonghan_.”

“ – for, like, at least a year.” He sets his jaw. “It’s impossible.”

Joshua twists his arm away from Jeonghan’s grasp and looks at him sternly. “Marks are all different. I’m serious,” he continues, withdrawing even further as Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “Research shows that maybe 1 in every thousand people who have marks get them belatedly. It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

Jeonghan shakes his hair out of his eyes, head tilted down. “You sound like such a dork right now,” he mutters, and looks carefully pleased for a second when Joshua snorts and hits him on the arm. His smirk fades, though, and he grows thoughtfully serious again. “Why – why’s it look fucking awful, then?”

Joshua shifts, peers up at Jeonghan, tries to catch his line of sight. “Do you remember what we were talking about, when you grabbed me?”

“…I was pissed at you. Because – because your mom didn’t want you dating some random non-marked guy, someone who would just leave you stuck in Korea for longer.” Jeonghan’s shoulders dip down, defeated. “Are you serious? And now it’s my fault that you’re gonna have that on you for the rest of your life? Just because I was being dumb about,” he pushes his hair out of his face again, a nervous tic, “about, I don’t know, pointless things?”

“Not pointless,” Joshua says lowly, crumpling his sweatshirt even further in between them. They’re closer now, maybe a foot of space in between them “She- she was being unreasonable, I know.”

“She’s your mom, don’t talk bad about her.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying.”

Jeonghan sways towards him, caught in a current. “But,” he says after second, voice cracked just a bit, “does this mean, um.” He reaches out again, takes Joshua’s wrist this time, fingers loose around the delicate joints. “We’re, you know.”

Joshua grins, tentatively, at him. “Is this is when I get to make fun of you for forgetting how to speak Korean?”

Jeonghan rolls his eyes again but when he looks back at him Seungkwan can see the edge of something wide-eyed and stunned. “You wish, I’m eloquent as hell.” He turns Joshua’s hand over and slips his fingers between Joshua’s. “We’re soulmates, then.”

Joshua’s grin widens a little. “Looks like it.” Jeonghan matches him, smile going from just the edges of a smirk to a full-blown, teeth showing grin. They look at each other for a moment, and then – as if they can’t help it, as if drawn together like magnets – Jeonghan ducks forward and Joshua brings a hand up to push through the hair at the nape of his neck and they’re kissing.

Seungkwan flushes and looks away, privately embarrassed to have witnessed such a raw moment. He glances at Hansol, instead, and silently takes in his expression. He’s still looking at them, mouth agape dumbly and eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. He looks completely shocked, and he’s still gripping Seungkwan’s hand tight.

Seungkwan ends up focused in on the way their hands look, looped together in the space between them, as if he’s wearing blinders to anything else. It’s Hansol’s left hand, the marked one, but the freckles are facing down towards the pavement, away from Seungkwan. If he wanted to, he could pretend they weren’t even there – that maybe, when they took their hands away, there would be faint matching stains on the palms, symmetrical birthmarks on the knuckles where their fingers are overlapping.

Voices, again. “Stop, hey – “ Joshua pauses and there’s the scuffing sound of shoes against the concrete, and Jeonghan laughing brightly. “Hey, c’mon, we’re in the sketchiest place possible right now.”

“We’ve been in worse,” and Jeonghan sounds so different, confident, voice alive and teasing. “Don’t tell me you’ve decided to be a saint, now, defend your purity.”

Joshua huffs a laugh and when Seungkwan peeks back at them he’s leaned up, pressing one more kiss sweetly onto Jeonghan’s mouth. He pulls away, then, and Seungkwan swears he almost looks like a different person. “Let’s go. We abandoned Chan, it’s supposed to be his celebration dinner.”

Seungkwan and Hansol watch the two of them, hands still clasped together, pull the door back open and slip into the restaurant again. The latch clicks closed, and there’s a brief pause before Hansol covers his eyes with his free hand.

“Oh my god.” They’ve both been squatting, low to the ground, but now Hansol lets his ass fall flat on the pavement. “Oh my god, they’re soulmates.” At first Seungkwan thinks he’s upset, or angry, but then his shoulders start shaking in laughter and Hansol takes his hand away, looks up at him. His eyes are shining. “They’re so fucking ridiculous.”

“You… you didn’t know, then?” Seungkwan asks, carefully. His heart is racing, a little, with empathetic excitement at their joy. He carefully lowers himself to the ground too.

“No way,” Hansol tips his head back against the wall, looking up at the dark sky. “Josh showed me his mark but wouldn’t tell me who he got it from, like, a month ago or so. Then, I figured he told Jeonghan and Jeonghan was just upset because he’s been wanting to date him for real for, like, ever. I thought Jeonghan was just mad because Josh got marked with someone else, and Josh was mad because Jeonghan was being a dick.” He shakes his head and laughs again. “I can’t fucking believe this, they’ve been moping around for a month for nothing.”

Seungkwan laughs a little too, softer, hesitant. These aren’t his friends, and he feels kind of like he’s peeking in on something too private and gentle for his eyes, but Hansol is warm against his side and his heart has settled in his ribcage.

Hansol’s shoulders are still shaking against his when he turns his head, rolls it to the side against the brick to look at Seungkwan. He’s flushed, a little, across the bridge of his nose and up to his cheekbones, and his grin is wide and bright in the moonlight.

Seungkwan’s ears burn, and he doesn’t think anything at all when he leans in and kisses him. Hansol responds almost immediately, which Seungkwan later realizes was maybe a bad sign for how much soju they’d both had at that point.

Everything seems to happen quickly after that. They’re sitting next to each other but then Hansol’s gripping his hips and pulling and then he’s kneeling, above him, scrambling to balance himself with one knee on either side of Hansol’s thighs.

They get used to each other’s mouths faster than Seungkwan thought possible, and it’s open-mouthed and wet and edged with thin desperation. Seungkwan’s hands are gripping Hansol’s shoulders, sturdy and strong-feeling through the thin fabric of his button-down, and Hansol’s fingers are moving restlessly at where the white shirt that Seungkwan’s been wearing since the beginning of his shift that morning is tucked into his pants.

The air outside is cool, and feels good on the back of Seungkwan’s neck. Hansol seems to give up on reaching Seungkwan’s skin and instead he moves one hand up to smooth at Seungkwan’s temple, and tucks the other hand into his back pocket. Squeezes, hard.

Moans into Seungkwan’s mouth when Seungkwan makes a noise, without thinking, and pushes down into Hansol’s lap.

Bites at Seungkwan’s bottom lip before licking deeper into his mouth, thumb pressing steady and sure just beside Seungkwan’s ear.

Seungkwan’s stomach swoops, dizzy, and he hears himself whine because Hansol feels wrapped around him, surrounding, but soft and gentle and perfect. Hansol moves his hand from his ass to curve around the outside edge of one of Seungkwan’s thighs, which are trembling from holding his weight above Hansol. His palm feels hot, like a brand, like the imprint of it will live on Seungkwan’s skin months from now.

The image of it, of a bruised-color outline marking his skin, sends reality rocketing through Seungkwan’s thoughts and he breaks the kiss, catches his breath. Their panting is loud in the empty alley way, and Seungkwan’s lips are buzzing.

Hansol looks like he’s been electrocuted, mouth red, eyes wide and staring at Seungkwan. He looks like a starving man that’s been presented with a feast, startled and dazzled and unsure where to begin, unsure whether it’s all a mirage.

Seungkwan’s stomach thrills with the idea that he’s something to be desired that much, and then sours immediately when he remembers again just where they are, who they are. “I- I’m so sorry, I’m _so_ sorry, shit,” he stammers out, scrambles up, careful not to kick Hansol when his limbs don’t seem to want to respond to him the way he wants them to.

He stumbles back a few steps, legs shaky and boneless, wanting to collapse again. Hansol blinks up at him from the ground and he suddenly looks so young. Seungkwan feels sick with himself for doing this again, for being so selfish. He cups a hand to his mouth. Says, muffled, “I’m so sorry, I’m an idiot, I didn’t mean – I didn’t mean to do this.”

Hansol twitches, and Seungkwan can’t look anymore (he’s _such_ a coward, he’s a fucking asshole), and so he spins on his heel and takes off around the corner. He runs right past the door back to the restaurant, and skids down the sidewalk, weaves past drunk crowds lingering outside of convenience stores.

Maybe three minutes of him wandering and then he finds an empty bus bench. The regular buses have stopped running at this point, and Seungkwan sits heavily on the cool metal, rubs his eyes with shaky hands. Covers his face, holds his breath for as long as he can.

Ten minutes pass and then his phone vibrates, ringing in his pocket. He doesn’t startle, just waits a few seconds to pull it out and check the caller ID. Answers it.

Pause. “Soonyoung-hyung?” Pause. “I, um, I fucked up again,” throat thickening with tears. “Can you come find me?”

They take the subway home that night, Seungkwan tucked protectively in between the other two because they don’t like to leave him alone when he’s upset. He lets his head tip onto Seokmin’s shoulder and makes soft noises about how he probably drank too much, he’s so sorry he’s been such an irresponsible dongsaeng, please don’t be mad at him.

Soonyoung, who had apparently sobered up at some point during the period of time he was gone, keeps a hand on his knee but doesn’t say anything. He lets Seokmin carefully deny Seungkwan’s apologies, and when they get back home he leaves a glass of water on Seungkwan’s windowsill and sits on his bed. Soonyoung presses the hair away from his forehead with a careful hand, and peers at him from under lowered, serious brows.

“You’re in a really bad place, aren’t you,” he mutters.

Seungkwan blinks up at him and then looks away, closes his eyes. “I think I really messed things up,” he says mostly into his pillow.

Soonyoung sighs, and combs his hair back again gently. “We’re gonna go get you a haircut tomorrow, ‘kay? You’re starting to look like a little too shaggy.” With that, he smooths his hand over Seungkwan’s forehead one more time before he pushes himself up, leaving Seungkwan in the dark.

+++

Seungkwan sleeps, restlessly, and it seems like only a few minutes pass before it’s morning. He wakes up earlier than he thought, and downs half the glass of water that Soonyoung left before rolling back over and pressing his face into the cool side of his pillow.

He only gets about twenty minutes of calm before the door to his room slides open and Soonyoung pads across the floor in sock feet. He yanks Seungkwan up, pushes him to the bathroom to wash up, and before he realizes it they’re outside again in the pale light of the morning.

Seungkwan blinks, and his head feels like it’s filled with cotton. Not really because of the alcohol from the night before – he wasn’t drunk enough to forget anything, and he isn’t even really hungover, but none of it feels real. None of it feels like it actually happened.

“C’mon, kid,” Soonyoung grunts at him in his rough morning voice, and starts them off down the street. “We gotta take the bus up a few stops but it won’t take long.” He reaches up to ruffle Seungkwan’s hair, and Seungkwan plays along and whines in complaint. “You’ll look better than ever, just wait.”

Seungkwan hums in assent and pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. It really doesn’t take long to get to the salon, and Soonyoung seems fine with Seungkwan being more nonverbal than usual on the way there. The stylist that ends up letting them in is tall and handsome, speaks with a slight lilt to his voice that hints at time spent abroad but is friendly as anything.

“What’re you thinking of?” He (his nametag reads ‘Junhui’, with a lopsided smiley face after it) asks, combing through Seungkwan’s hair.

Soonyoung is perched on the chair of the next station over, and makes an exaggerated humming noise as he pretends to think. “Our Seungkwannie needs a bit of a change, I think.”

“Short?” Junhui fiddles with the clippers. “I can leave it a bit longer in the front, it’ll make your face look slimmer.”

Soonyoung kicks out at Seungkwan, even though he misses. “See? You’re gonna look so pretty, just you wait.”

“I didn’t think my hair was that bad,” Seungkwan grumbles under his breath, but quietly lets his head be tilted to the side as Junhui starts. He shaves the back of his hair shorter, clips the sides, and Soonyoung keeps up a running, mostly one-sided conversation over the buzz of the clippers and the Hyuna single playing over the salon’s speaker system.

Seungkwan closes his eyes, lulled to a degree of calm by Junhui’s steady hands keeping his head in place as he works. Without really meaning to, he lets his mind wander to last night. Which, god. He’s such an idiot.

He swallows, and lets Junhui tilt his head a degree further down, clenching his hands in his lap. It hadn’t been on purpose, not really. Seungkwan liked to think he knew better at that point – he had spent weeks wallowing in the decision that, yes, he wouldn’t meddle with this boy. Hansol deserved to be with the person he was meant for, and Seungkwan wanting to ignore that fact was just selfish.

It hadn’t seemed to matter, though, in that split second last night with the moon shining silver on the two of them in a dirty back alley. It was like something deep inside of him had tugged him forward, urged him to kiss Hansol that very second, ever though he knew better. He squirms in the chair, then stops when Junhui nudges him to stay still.

Hyuna’s rapping about being the best when Junhui taps him on the shoulder and Seungkwan opens his eyes, finally. He looks at himself in the mirror, tilts his head to the side slightly to get a better look. His hair looks fine – it’s the same dark brown it always is, just looking a bit more well-kept and neat then before. His eyes are puffy, a little bit, and his dark circles are more pronounced than usual. His lips look chapped, red.

“See, so handsome,” Soonyoung reaches over and pats him on the knee. “C’mon, let’s go get coffee and then we can go shopping. I need to get a jump on getting a Parent’s Day gift this year, Seokmin swears he won’t bail me out and get one for me to give them this time.”

Seungkwan carefully doesn’t mention that Parent’s Day isn’t for another month. They pay, Junhui smiling brightly the entire time, and head out. Seungkwan ends up trailing after Soonyoung from department store to department store, offering mostly half-hearted advice as Soonyoung smells what feels like every perfume that was ever created while trying to find something for his mom.

It works, though. Seungkwan barely thinks about the last night at all – only when things remind him, like when his eyes catch on a pair of sneakers in one of the stores that ring familiar in his mind as something Hansol might wear. They end up staying out ‘till close to six, and come home to find Seokmin focused in on making curry rice.

“You’d make such an amazing housewife,” Soonyoung teases him, smacking his ass with the flat edge of a shopping bag. Seungkwan carefully ignores it when they kiss, instead heading into the bathroom.

He washes his face roughly, and then props himself on the edge of the counter to level a look at his reflection. “You have a morning shift tomorrow,” he tells himself sternly. “Hyerin told you to not come back if you look like death warmed over, and you’re not much better right now.”

He huffs at himself and leans closer, pinches his cheeks to try to get some red into where they seem to hang pale, almost sallow. It’s probably a sign that he should be getting more of some kind of vitamin, he muses, and tilts his face side to side, inspecting his haircut.

When he shifts his head a little to eye the left side Seungkwan doesn’t know what to think at first. He moves closer to the mirror, squints. His stomach contracts like it’s being sucked into a black hole. It doesn’t make sense.

Soonyoung and Seokmin are shoulder to shoulder, leaning over the bubbling pot of curry when he slides quickly into the kitchen. Soonyoung startles a bit as Seungkwan almost runs into one of their kitchen chairs and turns around, hands at the ready to catch him if need be.

“What, what’s wrong, what’s up?” He stammers, and Seungkwan would feel guilty about the fact that Soonyoung apparently feels so on edge about his well-being if he wasn’t so singularly panicked right now.

“Hyung,” he demands, and walks right up to the two of them. Tilts his head so the left side of his face is towards them. “Have you noticed these before?”

Seungkwan waits while they lean in, unsure and confused at first as they look at the three moles that dot the skin in front of Seungkwan’s ear. They’re evenly spaced, the bottom one in line with the edge of his earlobe and the top one close to his hair line, tiny and dark. He’s never seen them before.

Soonyoung’s the first one to make a startled noise of realization, which makes sense. He’s known Seungkwan the longest, which includes back during his freshman year when he’d had to all but shave his head after dying his hair blonde and then getting ridiculous roots as it grew back in. He would have noticed them then. But he hadn’t, because they definitely hadn’t been there before.

Seokmin glances between the two of them, confused. “What’s going on? What is it?”

Soonyoung’s mouth is wide open when Seungkwan finally looks back up at him. He’s mute for a second, and just kind of flaps a hand to hit limply against Seungkwan’s shoulder. “You- when did- what?”

Seungkwan shakes his head, feels like his brain keeps trying to make connections that don’t exist and everything’s just timing out. “I don’t know, I’ve never seen them before, my hair was long enough that it would have covered them for a while.”

Seokmin clues in, then. “Are those _marks_?” The word makes a shudder run down Seungkwan’s spine, putting voice to the suspicion that’s churning at his gut. He presses forward again, and Seungkwan turns his head so he can get a better look. “Geez, Seungkwan, look at those. How would you not have noticed getting them? It’s a pretty weird place.”

Seungkwan shakes his head, about to insist that he has no idea where they could have possibly come from before he swallows it back. He feels like a computer trying to load up a website but the wi-fi connection isn’t strong enough; his mind is buffering.

He can feel the snow wet on his eyelashes as Hansol pushes a hand through his hair on his left side, cups the back of his neck and sweeps his thumb over the side of his face before he kisses him. The way his ear – really just the left one, now that he’s actively thinking about it – had burned when he spotted Hansol across the crowded room of the samgyupsal place. The hard press of concrete through the knees of his trousers when Hansol had one hand on the thickest part of his thigh and the other gripping his neck again, thumb steady on his temple.

His mind is skipping like an old CD, moving from track to track and then jerking back in confusion.

It skips back to months ago, a brisk February morning with grey skies and a tall boy rubbing the back of his neck, embarrassed. Following Seungkwan inside (holding the door open for him) and asking for an iced Americano. Being handed a 10,000 won bill and – and the barest brush of skin on skin, accidentally bumping against his wrist, just barely, with the heel of his hand.

Seeing a galaxy of freckles on that wrist a few weeks later. Hadn’t thought anything of it because he felt like he’d never seen him without them. Kissing that boy even later than that but being so, so sure that he wasn’t meant for him that it hadn’t even crossed his mind to check.

Leaving the boy sitting on the ground outside a smoky restaurant and running in the opposite direction.

Seungkwan skips back to the present, to Soonyoung with a hand on his arm like he’s worried he’s going to fall over and Seokmin still wearing the dumb apron that Soonyoung got him as a gag gift a year ago. Soonyoung’s looking at him, forcing eye contact, and when Seungkwan looks back at him he feels as if Soonyoung knows instantly. His eyebrows shoot up, then pinch together, and then Soonyoung swallows visibly.

“Alright.” He sounds shaken but still way more sure than Seungkwan is right now. “Sit down and we’ll eat, ok?” He shakes Seungkwan’s arm a little, in lieu of the hug that Seungkwan can tell he wants to give him. He appreciates the substitution – he feels like he would shake apart a little too easily right now if Soonyoung did try to hold him.

“Ok.” Seungkwan gets steered to the kitchen table, where he watches Soonyoung hiss something to Seokmin at the counter by the stove. He carefully runs a fingertip over the moles. Now that he knows about them he can pick them out easily, smooth bumps just barely raised against the rest of his skin.

He has no way of getting in contact with Hansol, Seungkwan realizes. They were never really normal friends – they kind of just ran into each other. Suddenly he hears Joshua’s voice, sitting in the café months ago. _“Wouldn’t that mean you’d tend to drift back to the same circles?”_ Seoul was huge. How else had they managed to run into each other out of nowhere twice now?

Seungkwan doesn’t taste much when they finally eat, and his hand keeps drifting up to feel the moles without him thinking about it. Soonyoung doesn’t ask, doesn’t bring it up again, but Seungkwan can tell that he knows. He appreciates it, the discretion. He needs to think it all out for himself before he can explain it to anyone else.

He spends another few minutes in front of the mirror later when he’s washing up for bed, tracing the line that the moles make down the skin in front of his ear. Learning the exact placement, even though Seungkwan can already find them easily with just touch.

He doesn’t really sleep that night, his mind is reeling and tumbling over itself endlessly, so he ends up getting out of bed way earlier than necessary. He has the opening shift, for the first time in months now, so he decides that he can just sit in the café for a bit before it opens. It’d be better than just lying awake in his bed, he figures, as he hops off the subway and weaves his way down the street.

It’s barely 5 in the morning – a full hour before he would normally get to the café to start getting things ready for opening. The sun is just rising, casting the sky into shades of light orange that he normally doesn’t see, and Seungkwan feels like he should have rubbed the skin raw over his moles by now.

He rounds the corner towards the street the café is on and he isn’t even looking up, eyes tracing the white lines on the road marking a bike lane, and so he doesn’t see the figure standing in front of the building until it’s too late. Seungkwan falls to a standstill, in front of the Etude chain store that’s one building down from the café.

Hansol’s leaning against the window next to the front door with its ‘Closed’ sign, phone hanging loosely in his hand now that he’s spotted Seungkwan down the road. He’s back in ripped jeans, hair soft and freshly washed.

They stand there for a second, still a full forty feet away maybe, and then Seungkwan slowly starts walking again. Fumbles with his keys when he gets to the door, because he suddenly can’t look at Hansol and instead has to focus really, really hard on undoing the lock.

“Um,” he says, and now that he’s aware of it he doesn’t know how he could ever ignore the way that his temple is almost stinging with the proximity. “You can come in, if you want.”

Hansol doesn’t move, and when Seungkwan finally manages to peer up at him his eyebrows are furrowed deeply. “You sure?” he asks, and Seungkwan’s heart feels like it’s trying to throw itself out of his ribcage just to get closer to him.

“Yeah,” he stutters out, and pushes the door open. Goes inside. It takes a second, but Hansol puts his hand out to catch the door just before it closes. Follows him inside.

Seungkwan breathes in shakily and dumps his backpack behind the counter. Hansol stands in the doorway, hands in his pockets, and Seungkwan feels like the universe is just laughing at him now for not being able to notice the patterns it sets up. “You can just sit wherever,” he says, and sees the words ring familiar in the way that Hansol looks up at him.

Seungkwan leans against the counter, the outside edge of it, next to the cash register, and tries to gather his words. How do you even start conversations like these? Conversations about ‘oh, sorry I kissed you and then freaked out and pushed you away _twice_ , but I just realized we’re soulmates and now I’m cool with dating you, if that’s still something you’d be interested in’.

Instead of sitting Hansol just walks a little closer, faces him. A second goes by. “You know,” he starts, and his voice sounds rough. He looks tired, now that they’re inside under the fluorescents, and Seungkwan remembers that it’s barely dawn. “I think your boss is a little pissed at me.”

Seungkwan blinks, because this was not how he had expected the conversation to start. “Hyerin-noona? What – why would she be mad at you?”

Hansol shrugs. His eyes still look quietly serious. “I was coming here before you guys opened almost every day for a while. I… I didn’t know how else to find you, after I ran off that night we were out shopping. I just wanted to get you alone, to talk about all this, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Seungkwan grips the edges of the counter with white knuckles, but Hansol continues. “You didn’t work the opening shift again, though, so I just kind of bought coffee once your manager got there and went to class.” He smiles, a little, at the ground. “I think she thinks I’m some caffeine-addicted monster.”

“I don’t think you’re that bad,” Seungkwan tries, but Hansol looks up and points at him, as if he’s been caught in something.

“See? You keep doing that.” He huffs and rubs through his hair with his hand, looks away again. “I don’t know if I’m imagining things or if you’re just messing with me on purpose. You keep being nice, and funny, and I think everything’s alright, but then – then it’s like everything is wrong and the world is falling apart.” Hansol’s voice cracks a bit and Seungkwan feels suddenly awful. “It’d be fine, you know, if it was just simple, and you just rejected me and that was that. I can handle that, you know? It wouldn’t be the first time, and I’m like 24 now, I should be able to take that.”

“I don’t know if I can handle this.” He hangs his head, palm still on the back of his head, fingers threaded through the shorter hair at the nape of his neck. “And I don’t really know why I came today. I wasn’t going to, but then – Friday night happened, uh, and I didn’t know how – how drunk you were, if that’s why you left, or if I did something wrong, or what.”

Hansol stops, and drops his hand to burrow back into his pocket. At the last second Seungkwan sees a glimpse of freckled wrist and, this time, the sight shoots through his heart and creeps up his throat.

Before he can think not to, he says “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Seungkwan shifts against the counter, and swallows. “I meant what I said that night, at the beginning. I do like you.” Hansol twitches back a little when he says that, but Seungkwan steamrolls right on. “I _do._ I still do. I’m… I guess I’m kind of romantic about these things, though.”

He twists his fingers together in front of him, tries to find words. “I knew you had a mark, and I figured that if I still tried to do anything with you despite that then I was just being selfish. I thought that, I don’t know, that anything we would have together would be inferior no matter what, and that I would just be distracting you from who you were supposed to be with if I let it happen.”

Hansol opens his mouth to say something but Seungkwan doesn’t let him get it out. “I _know_ that sounds stupid, but I – I can’t help it. I just worry about these things.” He shrugs, smiles a bit weakly. Can’t quite look at Hansol in the face now. “I, um, I realized something, though.”

Here it comes. He tightens his grip on the counter even more. “When did you get the mark? Did you ever figure it out, um, more specifically?”

Hansol shifts, uncomfortable with the change in focus. “Not really. Early in the year, maybe the beginning of February. Chan noticed it the day after Valentine’s Day, but I don’t know how recently I had gotten it before then.”

Seungkwan nods to himself. “Right. Um.” He tilts his head a little. “You might not believe me. I wouldn’t, either – I don’t exactly have any proof, but I promise this isn’t just me messing with you, seriously.” He reaches a hand up and taps at his temple, right at the edge of the bottom-most mole. “I didn’t used to have these.”

There’s a moment of silence, and Seungkwan doesn’t want to chance a look at Hansol. Instead, he keeps going. “I didn’t notice them until yesterday. Um. I didn’t realize, before, but the first time you touched me was that day last month when you kissed me, after the whole coat hunt thing.”

He sucks in a fortifying breath. “And I think that the first time I touched you was in February, when it was freezing but you got an iced Americano anyway because I think you might be a little crazy.”

More silence, but Seungkwan can see when Hansol takes a hesitant step forward. Another one. “You’re not messing with me, right?” He sounds more blank than Seungkwan expected, but at least he hasn’t left yet. “How do you even know?”

Seungkwan shrugs. “I didn’t at first. I couldn’t even remember _not_ seeing you without your mark, so I figured it was impossible anyways. Now, though, it’s like – I feel sunburnt, sometimes, where my mark is. It gets all hot and scratchy. Um. When you’re around.” He swallows. “Like it’s trying to get me to move closer.”

Hansol takes another step forward and now there’s only a few strips of the wooden laminate of the flooring separating them. Maybe a foot and a half. Maybe. He stops, hesitates, and Seungkwan chances a look up – and is pinned with the weight of Hansol’s stare.

His eyes look wide and dark and his brows are still furrowed heavy over them. “How did you know that?”

“What?”

“That – “ Hansol stops, frowns a little more. Pulls his hands out of his pockets and rubs at his mark. “I get that, sometimes. It felt like it was on fire, on Friday.” His mouth twists a little, suddenly determined, and he holds a hand up. “Can I try something?”

Seungkwan nods, can’t look away. Hansol carefully moves his hand closer, and the second his thumb touches the moles at his temple they’re announcing themselves with fanfare. His gut swoops and sends a flush across his cheeks. His ear burns, but then Hansol just sweeps his thumb across them again, slowly, and the heat settles.

Seungkwan bites his lip, holds out his right hand. “Can I – “ he starts, and Hansol immediately grabs him with his left hand. Seungkwan finds the knobby bone on the outside of his wrist, and when he brushes the pad of his thumb over it Hansol’s eyes go bright and shocked.

“How – “ He bites it off, and his eyes dart away from Seungkwan’s to look closely at the side of his face – at the marks, he realizes. “Really?” He looks back at Seungkwan, and his hand is shaking a little in Seungkwan’s grasp. “What does this mean, then?”

Seungkwan bites his lip to think, and a shiver runs down his back when Hansol glances quickly down at his mouth, just for a second. “I don’t know. It’s, um. It’s what you make of it.” He stops, tries again. “I don’t want you to think this is the only reason I like you. Because I do. It’s just, it’s more like, like I have confirmation. That this is ok, that, um. That I can have this.”

Hansol laughs shortly and looks so, so fond suddenly. “Is that what you make of it?”

Seungkwan blinks. His face feels hot, even though his marks have calmed down. “I – I guess? I mean,” and now the uncertainty of everything comes rushing back, “that’s just me, and I’d totally get it if you’re sick of me by now, it’s fine, I just thought – um, that I should tell you. Everything.”

“That’s everything?”

“Um. I think so?”

“Ok.” Hansol shifts, moves his hand from Seungkwan’s grasp to instead steady himself on the counter, leaning in towards him and bracketing him in. Surrounding, again. “Y’wanna know what I’m going to make of it?”

Seungkwan things he might be able to guess, but, “Sure.”

And then Hansol’s kissing him, and despite the fact that this is only the third time they’ve done this it feels familiar as anything. Seungkwan would be embarrassed at how quickly he melts into it except Hansol seems to be doing the same thing, swaying in and tightening his grip on Seungkwan. He thinks, for a second, of the undeniable way that Jeonghan and Joshua had leaned in towards each other that night in the alleyway.

His mind skips away from that memory, though, because right now Hansol is hot against his front and it’s like they never stopped the other night. Seungkwan surges up to his toes and wraps his arms around his neck, presses even closer, nips at the corners of his mouth and when Hansol laughs he laughs, too. He shivers when Hansol sweeps a hand to the small of his back.

The rope that was wrapped around his heart, through the bones of his ribcage, and knotted tightly in his gut falls loose and Seungkwan feels lighter than ever before. He remembers the bright, airy way his sister had laughed when she told him about her mark, about the man that had left it there. He remembers the relief and hope and love in Jeonghan’s eyes when Joshua tilted up towards him.

He opens his mouth for Hansol’s tongue and makes a soft, happy noise at the faint taste of mint toothpaste. Now that he’s not distracted by the initial panic of a boy he likes too much kissing him, or the quick and hurried soju-fueled pace of the second time, he can think more. He can wonder at the familiarity of it all, about how it feels like they’ve done this a million times. About how Seungkwan knows before he does it that when he traces the skin at the side of Hansol’s neck it’ll make him shudder, a little, and make a low noise into his mouth.

They’re at the perfect height for Hansol to prod Seungkwan just a bit further back, and hitch him up to sit on the counter next to the tip jar. He presses further in between Seungkwan’s thighs, which he moves quickly to make room for him, automatic. Cups Hansol’s jaw with his hands, near-reverent, and hums happily when Hansol thumbs at the bones of his hips.

Realizes that he doesn’t know what time it is, and he’s technically on the clock right now.

Seungkwan breaks away and hides a laugh in Hansol’s shoulder, soft and warm with the sweatshirt he’s wearing. “Um.”

“Yeah?” Hansol’s voice sounds rough and shot and he clutches tightly to Seungkwan’s waist.

“Don’t hate me. But we’re kind of in the middle of my place of employment right now.”

A moment, and then Hansol snorts and presses a newly-hesitant kiss to Seungkwan’s temple. Then two more – tracing the path of the moles there. “Guess we are.”

Seungkwan pulls back and lets himself take in Hansol’s face, the way he’s biting his lip through a grin. He smooths over one of his eyebrows with the pad of his thumb, and then kisses him one more time, quick. “We should do this again, though. Maybe somewhere else.”

“Yeah,” Hansol says, smile breaking out wider. “That sounds good to me.”

“Ok.” Seungkwan lets Hansol kiss him again (the last time, he promises, but then he returns it for a bit longer than he intended). “Ok."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is, an entire fic based off of the moment when I realized Seungkwan had those three moles by his ear and my brain went off the rails. I still can't make myself write anything but the most cavity-inducing fluff, but here it is. I hope you like it!
> 
> Again, come say hi or request fic/headcanons at boo98.tumblr.com, I'd love to talk to you all!


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